2 oz. maple syrup, 1 oz. flaxseed oil, garnish with lies and lemon wedge

With the steroid controversy alternately looming and hovering over the glorious first days of Spring Training, the Mets' unwillingness to improve their performance illegally (as well as traditionally) is a welcome breath of fresh air.

Or it would be, if the reason our team's premier slugger doesn't use steroids is that his attendant yoga guru is more Balki than BALCO and has him convinced special potions containing flaxseed oil are what he really needs to give him an edge.

Piazza said he offered to catch yesterday, but Art Howe declined and planned to hold him out until tomorrow. Piazza partially faulted dehydration - curious since his yoga instructor/nutritionist, Anderson Bourell, trails him with a jug filled with a special potion containing apple-cider vinegar, Grade B maple syrup, cayenne pepper and flaxseed oil.

Anderson Bourell breaks the first rule of hiring dependable lackeys, namely that you can't trust anyone whose first name is really a surname. It could be worse, however. He could use a first initial (T. Anderson Bourell) or have a hyphenated last name (Anderson Bourell-Smith).

I hope you appreciate the contempt with which this portrait of Mr. Bourell has been drawn. Rubin makes him sound like he scurries around after Piazza with twin clay jugs balanced on his head, his hands busy grinding up pixie dust and bat guano in a pestle and mortar inscribed with Celtic runes. Oh, sure, just because the guy's "unconventional" and "uses Grade B maple syrup", he's suddenly a crackpot. That's the kind of immature headhunting I've come to expect from New York journalists. Surely if writer Rubin could hear what Mr. Bourell had to say about nutrition, he'd come to respect the man's unprecedented authority in the nascent field of sports potion-brewery.

Maybe not.

"The difference is like having a dry piece of spaghetti or wet piece of spaghetti," said Bourell, who carried an extra jug containing water yesterday, referring to dehydrated muscles. "The main thing is diligence - be as hydrated as you can."

Who is this guy? Why does our star player employ such a goddamn useless charlatan? Cayenne pepper? That's refreshing! Nothing speeds the body up like maple syrup! Apple-cider vinegar - does a body good!

Jason Giambi's trainer is no longer allowed in the clubhouse, so Jason will have to get his tubes of testosterone cream or whatever it is sane baseball players use before he gets to the ballpark. I'm hoping the Mets go one step further and take out a restraining order on Mr. Bourell before he has Mike turning his bats into Wiccan totems and seeking spiritual reconciliation after sleeping with his girlfriend.

Well, at least there's still time to head off the totem thing.