A recent Journal-World headline focused on the storied career of tennis great Andre Agassi. He couldn’t have exited in classier fashion. For some reason, my eyes focused on “storied” and noted the same letters can fashion the word “steroid.”

What a contrast in the honorable way Agassi bowed out and how so many modern athletes either are exposed as chemically imbalanced after seemingly admirable careers end, or get nailed “using on the job” and leave in shame. Boy, have things deteriorated from when jocks did anything as scandalous as taking a shot of novocaine to minimize pain!

First time I was conversant with the fact some athletes “took shots” was as a Journal-World neophyte in the 1950s. The late Dean Nesmith was the stern and demanding KU athletic trainer. He grew incensed not only when he learned a player for another team had been buffered, but got even hotter when a KU athlete had the temerity to even ask for such.

“Dammit, you have pain for a reason!” the Deaner often raged. “You get a shot, don’t realize you can’t respond properly and you risk even more, or permanent injury! Now get the hell out of here!” Any Jayhawk who got a shot had to find some bootlegger.

Along came East German and Soviet Union athletes who did such amazing things in the Olympics – particularly those hairy, bulked-up female weight performers who looked as if they had to be born on June 6, 7 and 8. They and others on their teams were manufactured in hot houses and turned loose on normal people who didn’t deserve to face something out of Henry Frankenstein’s thunder-and-lightning laboratory.

Let’s get some testing, demanded American officials and athletes! It seems everybody was aware of what was going on except the people in a position to do something about it. So the medal counts rose to the detriment of those who were legitimate contenders; the guttural robojocks prevailed before they were collared, tethered and led back to their cages with the use of whips and chairs.

So down the line a lot of those communist lab rats suffered infertility, cancer and other devastations; men’s genitalia shrank beyond productivity and females developed gender aberrations too gross to mention. Many died early.

But too often such people won notable events. That caught the attention of people seeking to enhance their performances to superstar levels. So lookee what we have. Creams, injections, pills and lord knows what else. A revolting survey not so long ago: Various jocks were asked if they knew that chemical enhancement would turn them into champions but shorten their lives, by years, which route would they choose. Many picked you know what.

As Yogi Berra said, when you reach the fork in the road, take it. Lots of these nitwits did, not caring which path as long as it got them to some throne room, a Super Bowl title, a track sprint crown, baseball hitting records, you know the disgusting drill.

It’s bad enough when professional athletes aim for better living through chemistry; it has trickled down to the colleges, high schools and, honest, junior highs.

If you’re a parent and you see your innocent, unjuiced kid being faced down by some abnormal, obscenely muscled mastodon on the sauce, grab the kid and run!

Sadly, we’re seeing more “steroid” careers and fewer “storied” dossiers of honor.