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Friday, September 28, 2007

Chicago Reader: Miner: The Dope and the Dopes

Felons and Revolutionaries…“Was HGH or the baseball press responsible for Rick Ankiel’s fall from grace?”

Big-time sports has cast human growth hormone, or HGH, as the smaller, sneakier kid brother of anabolic steroids in a pharmaceutical rogues’ gallery. What it does for athletes isn’t clear, and it might not do much of anything, but the major leagues now ban it. And HGH is pretty much undetectable, which makes it doubly sinister.

Because one of my kids needed the hormone to reach a normal height, I’ve prepared and administered hundreds of HGH injections that I hope were vastly stronger than anything Ankiel took (it would be reckless to give a dose one-tenth as potent to an adult without an HGH deficiency). I respect HGH, and as a Cardinals fan I’m partial to Ankiel. I won’t excuse him, but I ask sportswriters to curb their sanctimony and get their facts straight.

 

Repoz Posted: September 28, 2007 at 05:01 AM | 4 comment(s) Login to Bookmark
  Tags: cardinals, steroids

Reader Comments and Retorts

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   1. Gambling Rent Czar Posted: September 28, 2007 at 11:06 AM (#2547661)
Because “shame on you” stories virtually write themselves, the drug scourge is one of the best things that ever happened to baseball columnists. They wake up on the side of the angels, thwack the devil, and sleep like children.
“I’m not jumping to any conclusions about his innocence or guilt,” allowed Bryan Burwell of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “We don’t have nearly enough evidence.”

So why was he writing at all?

Because, his column went on,
“we have more than enough circumstantial evidence to raise another doubting eyebrow at yet another suspicious athlete.”

The evidentiary standard for raising a doubting eyebrow is so extraordinarily low that I’d like to think no court takes it seriously but the one parents convene when cookies disappear and children are on the premises. But among journalists, even if there’s no proof, even if there’s no evidence, even if there’s only circumstantial evidence of evidence,

there’s an airtight justification for a column.


good read.
   2. phredbird Posted: September 28, 2007 at 05:19 PM (#2547998)
this is an excellent column.
   3. Shooty is in the Trust Tree Posted: September 28, 2007 at 05:40 PM (#2548029)
this is an excellent column.

You can tell it's reasonable because nobody is responding to it.
   4. spycake Posted: September 28, 2007 at 06:40 PM (#2548135)
That's the problem with Neutrals - you never know where you stand. Damn them and their neutrality!

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