The subject today is the pursuit of perfection, not that I have any first-hand experience. I get a leg cramp just thinking about it.

But that’s not true of the many people who are willing to do whatever it takes to make the amplifier go to 11 when the owner’s manual says 10 is the highest setting.

Christmas arrived this week for lots of men and boys who have been waiting, tongues out, for their Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues to arrive in the mail. It meshes well with the drama that played out Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

If his former personal trainer is to be believed, Roger Clemens used steroids and human growth hormone to help him remain a dominant pitcher while the calendar was telling him his body should be in decline.

Before the allegations were made, Clemens was the ideal of what we want in our superstars. He was a wonderful example of what natural gifts and a strong work ethic can do. He was sustained excellence.

Many of you don’t care if he used performance-enhancing drugs to be the best he could be, in the same way many of you don’t care if some of the SI models turned to surgery in the hope of being more attractive.

But it has to give you pause, doesn’t it, when you find yourself trying to decide what’s real and what’s fake in a person? I can hear thousands of voices, most of them male: No, it doesn’t!

So this is meant for the rest of us, for the people who wonder where we’re headed. I can’t shake the thought that 30 years from now we’re going to be watching cyborgs compete in the major-league home-run contest.

What is athletic excellence anymore?

What is beauty anymore?

Clemens and his wife, Debbie, serve as the perfect couple for a discussion of both issues.

Brian McNamee, Clemens’ former trainer, said he injected Debbie with HGH at Roger’s request before a photo shoot for the 2003 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. She denies this.

But back to the pursuit of perfection. Allegations of HGH use aside, what told Debbie Clemens that the look she achieved was worth striving for? What tells women that beauty is breast augmentation or nose jobs or face lifts? Or even that beauty can be found in an incredibly intense workout regimen and a strict lifestyle?

I don’t find most female bodybuilders to be particularly attractive. Both they and overly driven athletes have the same glassy eyed, single-minded look to them. It’s neither beautiful nor excellent.

In our world, the line is getting very, very blurred between natural and unnatural.

My definition of excellence, then, might seem silly and antiquated: Excellence in sports always occurs naturally; anything less is a fraud.

Please don’t tell me about swimmers who using cutting-edge suits to cut down on resistance or football players who take advantage of the latest research in nutrition. As far as I know, those aren’t illegal drugs as defined by the U.S. government. It’s an empty argument.

My definition of beauty revolves around the idea that natural is better than anything created by a surgeon’s scalpel.

There is a multi-billion dollar beauty industry that says I’m wrong.

And there are the millions of dollars that baseball franchises pocket each year from ticket sales that tells me people don’t care whether players use steroids.