Sport: Larger and Darker By the Day

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Ueberroth would monitor only illegal substances, dismissing prescription drugs like amphetamines, not to mention alcohol. As if arguing for old ways, New York Yankees Manager Billy Martin continues to hold forth in bars against strangers and starters alike, though one-handed since breaking his arm in a tangle with Pitcher Ed Whitson. Plastered to the elbow, Martin stopped by the Copacabana last week (which is a little like Janet Leigh going back into the shower), and each was surprised to find the other standing. Baseball also remains erect somehow. The players shamed in Pittsburgh have more than weathered the disgrace. Keith Hernandez of the New York Mets returned from the courthouse to Shea Stadium (and the pennant race) to an ovation.

At least in the case of Hernandez, a splendid first baseman, the compassion was exorbitant. The pitiful way he finally told the truth about his cocaine years did not match the virulent way he used to lie. In 1984, following a brief term as head of the Players Association, former Federal Mediator Kenneth Moffett recoiled at the drug scene and indiscreetly mentioned a couple of suspicious trades, including Hernandez' transfer from St. Louis. Denying just the implication of the truth was not enough for Hernandez, who furiously threatened a suit until Moffett eventually backed down in a humiliating public ceremony that Hernandez required. A few weeks ago, when Hernandez was apologizing to Mets fans, his agent was apologizing to Moffett. There is a test for the presence of drugs. There is none for an absence of character.

Bowing to no sport in the variety of its slums, college football displayed its own excesses last week. At Columbia University, the Ivy League for heaven's sake, Coach Jim Garrett defamed his team after a 49-17 loss to Harvard and castigated his punter in a manner too callous even for the pros, which now includes Texas Christian University. Counting himself among more than 50 T.C.U. alumni bagmen, Oil Tycoon Dick Lowe last week acknowledged his part in the purchase of 29 Horned Frog players since 1980. For a "blue chip" running back, Lowe described the going rate as $10,000 to $25,000 down, $1,000 a month and a new car. Six T.C.U. players have been suspended, among them All- America Running Back Kenneth Davis, a fifth-year senior who passed up the N.F.L. draft last time in a forlorn dream of winning the Heisman trophy. "They make us look like the rats, gnawing away," he told the Washington Post. "But they put the cheese out there for us."