Until they learn, latest death won't be last

To every witness in the know, this was a clear case of a diabetic in dire need of a glucose blast. To Pat and Mike Bechler, this surreal break in their cathartic journey was an unscheduled and unwanted reenactment of Steve's final moments in an Orioles uniform, when the 23-year-old right-hander turned a ghostly shade of pale while an ephedrine supplement helped cook his organs to a fatal boil.

"They need to ban that stuff in all sports," Bechler's father, Ernie, said yesterday by phone. "The warnings on the bottle are about asthma and other things. But it doesn't say it causes death, and it should, because now I know."

The father was sobbing as he told a reporter he could speak no more. His family would later appear and speak at a clubhouse memorial service that paid tribute to a Class AAA pitcher who died trying to get into big-league shape, a prospect who ignored his own wife's warnings that cutting inches off his waist wasn't worth the risk of cutting decades off his life.

Sad but true, athletes will forever say the right things in tragedy's wake before flipping through the next musclehead catalog arriving in the mail. The stakes are too high and the cash is too cold to suspend that perpetual hunt for an edge, and this is the secondary shame of Bechler's loss, beyond the primary shame involving a pregnant widow and a husband who was claimed weeks before the birth of his first child.

Athletes didn't learn from the death of Korey Stringer — see the NFL's subsequent suspensions — and athletes won't learn from the death of Steve Bechler — see the percentages cited by Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco, baseball's Hans and Franz, who declared that the game is overrun by steroid-injected frauds. Did they exaggerate for effect? Someone should ask the ambassador to andro, Mark McGwire.

Lyle Alzado wasn't the first athlete to kill himself trying to better his body, and with more sham testing policies like the one baseball's union endorsed, he won't be the last. Never mind that Joshua Perper, Broward County medical examiner, said the ephedrine supplement Bechler used likely contributed to his death. The union was too busy celebrating Greg Maddux's new wage to hear Perper's cry for help.

But lawyers don't deserve the most blame here, no matter how inviting a target they represent. The entire sports landscape is littered with athletes willing to compromise their health in pursuit of a faster time in the 40.

The football Giants' trainer, Ronnie Barnes, estimated that 75 percent of his players used ephedra before the NFL banned it. Twelve years after sprinter Ben Johnson was disgraced, a Brazilian swim coach named Michael Lohberg was quoted saying this about Olympic sport: "The athlete is either clean or he is fighting for gold. Both are not compatible."

The madness never ends. "I used to use ephedrine," said the Orioles' David Segui, "but it didn't do it for me, made me a little shaky. Now I just use protein. I mean, we're athletes. We have to push our bodies beyond the normal person. Right or wrong, that's how we make our money."

With her husband still in the hospital Monday, Kiley Bechler stood in the Orioles' clubhouse and warned the players about how recklessly they chase that money.

"She just said," Baltimore's Rick Helling recalled, " 'Most players feel invincible and feel a lot of pressure to compete in their jobs; don't let that pressure overcome what's really important in life, like your wife and kids and brothers and sisters.' Here she was, 7 1/2 months pregnant and her husband hanging on in the hospital. It took a very strong woman to do that."

It will take a very strong man like Helling, who threw out his ephedrine supplements after Korey Stringer's death, to honor Kiley's words. From his locker yesterday Helling pulled a bottle of Xenadrine, the supplement Bechler used.

"Only this is a brand that has no ephedrine," he said. "After Stringer died, I was through with that. ... I'll never do anything to jeopardize my health. I've got a wife and two kids at home. Baseball is what I do for a living, but it's not my life."

To the young and restless, this is a sermon best delivered to someone else.

"It's important to take care of your health," said the Orioles' John Valentin, who's used fat-burning, ephedrine-free supplements. "But it's a young kid's dream to make the major leagues."

Four of Bechler's family members arrived in a white limousine yesterday morning to reconnect with their stolen dream. Under swaying palms that cloaked a flag flying at half-staff, they watched the Orioles work out on the same field — Field 2 — where Steve had collapsed, and shook hands with Brian Ebel, the first trainer to make it to Steve's side. The Bechler family observed for a half-hour, walked back to the main clubhouse and, 10 minutes later, found Ebel and others treating a fallen Oriole.

Johnson's 6-6 body was draped across the back of the cart. He appeared sweaty, wobbly and barely conscious before being helped into a sitting position. In the throes of a diabetic episode after forgetting to adjust his insulin pump, Johnson needed 15 minutes of rest and a tube of glucose paste before he rose and walked into the clubhouse.

"It scared the hell out of everybody," Orioles manager Mike Hargrove said.

It scared nobody more than the grieving visitors from small-town Oregon, a baseball family that won't be the last to suffer this sorrow and pain.