NY Daily News: Ankiel linked to HGH

Is anyone else starting to just not care anymore? These guys get paid millions of dollars to play games, we watch them, drooling, like the audiences waving their raw turkey legs at a tractor pull. We get on them for "not playing hard enough" (JD Drew) when their personal lives have turned to shit. They don't have a minute's worth of privacy unless they move into the penthouse suite. We have to completely ignore the fact that there's an inherent and profound unfairness about the fact that some kid who couldn't spell Cat if you spotted him a consonant and the vowel is getting paid richly because he runs fast, and yet those of us who worked our asses off to become smart, well-rounded people make as much in a year as these guys make per game.

So really, when you get right down to it, who gives a flying fuck if some dude took HGH, ESPECIALLY if everyone can and most do? Is it even a competitive advantage if it's an option for everyone? I realize there's the spirit of being clean, of using only what you can develop yourself to succeed, but really, it's a fucking circus. Every professional sport is. And we eat it up like it's as important as anything else in our lives. We want these guys to be good. We want them to run faster 40s, throw harder fastballs, and push aside bigger and bigger linemen. So doesn't it start to seem a little friggin' useless (and even a bit hypocritical) to get all outraged when we find out someone took something to help them get better? Besides, OF COURSE Rick Ankiel took HGH. You don't go from being a skinny little fuck with decent stuff to a home run hitter in under three years without at least a little help.

 

You won points for your handle.

You lost them with rampant capitalization and STYX!

Get ME a Blatz, ASAP.

 

to play devil's advocate (10th graf of NYDN story):

Ankiel, 28, has not been accused by authorities of wrongdoing, and according to the Signature records obtained by The News, he stopped receiving HGH just before Major League Baseball officially banned it in 2005. MLB does not test for HGH, but a player who is known to have used it or even possessed it from the time it was banned can face a 50-game suspension.

we don't know if he's taking it now.

he played five games as a MLB pitcher in 2004. If he did take the HGH, it obviously didn't help much, as he "retired" as a pitcher in spring 2005 and became a hitter after that.

 

Ankiel was 20 when he was a "skinny little fuck." He's 28 now. ... And there's a part of me that doesn't care about this stuff. And another part of me that knows it was always this way in sports, even when the technology was too primitive to notice. But ... I just want to be entertained, and it bugs me that so many people (players and otherwise; fans too) would rather play the game on rookie level with the rules turned off instead of challenging themselves and their skills. There's no fun in winning that way, IMO.

 

Barenaked Ladies song. Styx is part of it.

 

Barenaked Ladies will lose you more points than STYX!

That'll cost you the aforementioned Blatz, plus a Red, White & Blue. That's right ... newbies fetch swill for me.

 

He obviously hit well in the minors and came up like the biggest story in ages. He's the new Mark Mcwire and Jose Canseco. He's a slugger.

 

This is the ultimate knee-jerk headline grabbing nothing story. Even if he used HGH, IT WAS BEFORE THE DRUG WAS BANNED! The only reason why this is a story is because Ankiel made it back to the show and is doing well at a new position.

 

I thought you backed Ankiel originally.

 

I think the point is that it takes the luster off of the feat he pulled off. Yes, HGH was legal in baseball up until he stopped receiving shipments of it, but I think we can all think retroactively here, and wonder if he'd have been able to do it without using a substance that is now non grata.

 

Story says he stopped receiving it just before it got banned. There's still a question as to his use.