After all, what's a dead pro wrestler, or two. Or 20. Or 80. They're only pro wrestlers; it's not as if they're real people.

While Bud Selig and Donald Fehr resisted Congress's efforts to expose and eliminate steroid use, they should be grateful that Congress, and, by extension America, gives a damn whether ballplayers live or die.

On the other hand, it's hard to keep a body count on pro wrestlers, under the age of 40, who have died sudden, steroid-aided deaths in the last 20-25 years.

Vince McMahon does not contract the Elias Sports Bureau to keep track. But that industry-wide number must be closing in on 100.

Not a single active MLB player is known to have died a steroid-related death. But imagine if there had been one. Or two. Imagine if a massively muscled outfielder with the Tigers or Cubs was found dead in his hotel room today.

That's page one, the lead story of every newscast.

But as pro wrestlers drop dead - four, five, six a year - they hardly make a sound.

Pro wrestlers, a fraction of the number of MLB's talent pool, regularly drop dead; few seem to notice and fewer seem to care. And that's just the way that McMahon & Co. want it.

Last week, as MLB and the MLBPA finalized the Congressionally exacted steroid policy, Eddie Guerrero, one of McMahon's top WWE stars, was found dead in his hotel room in Minnesota. He was 38.

Pro wrestlers are commonly found dead in their hotel rooms. In fact, steroid-fortified WWF (now the WWE) star Brian Pillman, 33, was found dead in his hotel room in Minnesota in 1997.

It works like this: The wrestlers know that their bosses want over-the-top muscle.

They know that there's an implied, industry-wide directive to be on or to get on the juice.

They know that they have to be on the road many weeks at a time, without any medical coverage or sick days.

Miss a show due to illness or injury and you miss a payday. Often, one or two misses and you're fired.

So the cycle begins. Steroids to get and keep the job, barbiturates to kill the pain and get some sleep, stimulants to get through the next gig.

That's why pro wrestlers are found dead in their hotel rooms.

Guerrero was only 5-8, but with muscles that pushed the limits of natural physiology. And he was a pro drug abuser every bit as much as he was a pro wrestler - the two, in the Vince McMahon Era, rarely stand alone.

While Selig, the king of baseball, is hauled before Congress, McMahon, the king of pro wrestling - himself once massed on steroids - skips through the cemetery. He surely must think it wonderful that so few people care, that the media view his business only as a trendsetter for lowbrow pop culture.

McMahon is so smug in his knowledge that the news media ignore the deaths of pro wrestlers that he actually exploits the fatalities to pump TV ratings. Shortly after Pillman's death, the WWF promoted a "stay-tuned-for" interview with Pillman's widow, who was too naive to understand that her late husband died both a drug- and pro wrestling business- related death.

Last week McMahon exploited Guerrero's death to make ratings hay with his NBC-TV partners, first on McMahon's hideously desensitizing USA Network show (USA is now owned by NBC) and then through a speak-no-evil memorial on MSNBC. And let's not forget McMahon's long friendship and partnerships with NBC Sports boss Dick Ebersol, who convinced NBC to turn Saturday nights over to McMahon's XFL.

There are other big shots who take big dives for McMahon. A former U.S. governor, for example, other than Jesse (The steroid Body) Ventura. Lowell Weicker, from McMahon's home state of Connecticut, is a former governor and senator.

Weicker has long served as a member of the WWE's Board of Directors. We don't know what Weicker is paid for his presence, but given that he has to look past the perversity of McMahon's TV product and that he has to look around the scores of dead young men produced by the industry, he works cheap.

Anyway, under threat of Congress, MLB last week introduced a stronger drug policy. That made big news - while another pro wrestler dropped dead. And they continue to drop dead, ever so softly, so as to scarcely make a sound.

Just the way McMahon likes it.   [email protected]  

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STRONG CASE: “WWE Smackdown” star Eddie Guerrero died last week in a Minnesota hotel room at the age of 38. Autopsy results have not been released, but Phil Mushnick says professional wrestlers should be scrutinized for steroid use just as closely as baseball players and other athletes have been in recent years.