Philadelphia first baseman Ryan Howard has a 14-game hitting streak. That won't get much mention because the Phillies' slugger has belted 10 home runs during his 14-game run. With four homers in his last three games, Howard is gaining fast on the 60-homer plateau with a major league-best 53. Another 60-homer season may have seemed unlikely with steroid testing in place, but the 26-year-old Howard looks certain to reach the mark in his first full season in the majors. Yahoo! Sports columnist Dan Wetzel suggests that Howard, upon reaching 62, should be declared "the single-season, 162-game home run champion." Wetzel's logic is that Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were "as juiced as a glass of squeezed oranges" and shouldn't be recognized for their "superior chemistry." He writes that fans, if not the record keepers of the game, should consider Roger Maris the record holder at 61 in 1961 until Howard or some other player tops the mark. Doesn't Wetzel exaggerate the end result of taking steroids? After all, the ability to center the bat on a 90-MPH fastball is the most important skill at work in hitting a home run, and clearly Bonds, McGwire and Sosa have done that as well as almost anyone who has played the game. If we assume all three players were juiced -- and there's still an "if" involved in that assumption -- can anyone document the specific effects of steroids in terms of how far balls will travel and how many homers they will help a player hit? Let's make the assumption for hypothetical purposes. Perhaps McGwire would have hit 64 homers without the juice instead of 70. Maybe Bonds still hits 66 instead of 73. Then one could say the number is tainted but the record is not. The other side of the argument, of course, is that if the player is tainted, then the record is tainted. That's how Roger Maris' son sees it. "If (Howard) breaks it, it's legit," Rich Maris told Yahoo! Sports. Sadly, the cost of MLB sticking its head in the sand on the steroid issue for most of the 1990s is ongoing suspicion. There has been buzz whether Howard is juiced, enough buzz that the home-run leader told the Philadelphia Daily News: "People are entitled to their opinions. . . I'm not doing it. If they want to test me, they can test me. If you're going to make those kinds of comments, have proof. Otherwise, you can ruin people's reputations."