FREEPORT - For most of his 18 years in professional baseball, Frank Thomas was on teams that didn't fare so well in the standings.

So, the former Pittsburgh Pirates slugger can relate to the trials and tribulations of the 2005 version of the beleaguered Bucs.

"I spent 18½ in baseball and I spent 12 of them in last place," said Thomas, sitting on a folding chair and musing about summers past at the Freeport International Baseball Invitational Tournament Thursday evening.

"But what's so great about the game of baseball is you can get beat 17-0 today, but you always have tomorrow. That's why baseball is the greatest game in the world."

It pains Thomas, who is 71 years old but still spry, to see the troubles the Pirates have endured over the past 13-plus seasons.

"It's a shame they are not doing better," he says, adjusting the Pirates cap on his head.

Thomas lived through another dark era for the Pirates.

He broke in with the club in 1951 and played in Pittsburgh until 1958. During those years, he hit 163 home runs, but the Pirates compiled a 481-751 record (a meager .390 winning percentage) during that span, including three straight 100-loss seasons.

Two seasons after he left Pittsburgh for Cincinnati, the Pirates won the World Series.

But Thomas has no regrets. He watches the game today insisting it is fundamentally the same, but the people in it and the circumstances around it have changed.

Thomas hit 286 career home runs in his 16 years in the majors. Back then, there were no supplements, no weight training, no dieticians.

Ballparks were bigger. Pitchers better.

"What has changed is the parks are smaller and everything is so watered down," Thomas said. "It's always the same teams in it every year. Baseball needs a salary cap, but it will never get one. The only way to get it is to do what hockey did."

But the big issue that sticks with Thomas these days is steroid use.

He said the only supplement baseball players used in his day was alcohol.

And a lot of it.

"We drank a lot," Thomas said.

Thomas watched the congressional hearings on steroids and came to several conclusions.

He lauded Jose Canseco, author of the book "Juiced" that precipitated the congressional hearings. He chided Mark McGwire.

"I just think he did a great service to baseball. What he did was a blessing," Thomas said. "And McGwire made a fool out of himself. All he had to do was say, 'I did steroids. It wasn't banned in baseball back then. Let me get on with my life,' and everything would have been forgiven. People are compassionate when you tell the truth.

"As it is now, he tarnished everything he did. It's the same with Bonds. He said he used a cream and didn't know what it was, …" Thomas said, shaking his head with a smirk.

Thomas is most concerned with how steroids are viewed among the youth, who are playing the sport in high school and at the Freeport Invitational this week.

"I don't care who it is, if they took steroids, they should be out of the game," Thomas said. "I don't like the one strike, two strike, three strikes you're out policy. There are too many young kids like the one's who are here who look up to those guys."

Thomas is a fixture every year at the Freeport event.

Sonny Westerman, who has coordinated the tournament since its inception in 1994, calls Thomas each year and asks him to be a part of the festivities, and Thomas obliges, driving to Freeport from his home in North Hills.

"(Sonny) catches up with me and I put it on my schedule," Thomas said. "It's a great tournament. The kids are here to have fun. There's no pressure on them to win. They just come out and play to improve themselves."