Friday, September 7, 2007

Et Tu, Ankiel?


I got up this morning in a pretty damn good mood. Despite some recent setbacks, the Cardinals have still managed to fight and claw their way within one game of the tied-for-first-place Brewers and Cubs. When I went to bed last night, Carlos Zambrano had been exposed as a universal jackoff, Ryan Dempster had blown a crucial save against the Dodgers and Rick Ankiel had smoked two homeruns for 7 RBI's to lead the Cardinals to a 16-4 beatdown of the Pirates. Everything was peaceful and right with the world.

Then I woke up this morning to the New York Daily News article. I am unequivocally and painfully STUNNED. Coming the morning after what was arguably his greatest game to date, it has been revealed that the St. Louis Cardinals' comeback kid has been implicated in the use of performance enhancing drug HGH. Talk about BUZZ KILL. I feel like I just got punched in the stomach. Even without knowing the validity or relevance of the accusations, I can't help but be supremely disappointed. The proverbial bubble has been burst, the illusion of innocence shattered. If the allegations are true, it doesn't matter if he stopped taking the drugs before the 2005 ban went into place. It still changes everything because his unbelievable story is going to be permanently viewed with suspicion anyway. There are a lot of people talking about the development this morning, all of them more articulately then me. See here, here and here.

My personal take? Siiiiigh. I don't know. I'm not sure I'm over the initial shock and horror of it all just yet. In a season plagued by ugliness, from Tony LaRussa's DUI, to Josh Hancock's death, to the serious injuries eliminating Chris Carpenter, Josh Kinney, Preston Wilson and Scott Rolen, to less serious injuries sustained over the course of the year by Yadier Molina, David Eckstein, Jim Edmonds and Mike Maroth, to Scott Spiezio's undisclosed substance abuse problem, to Juan Encarnacion's potential career ending eye injury and then finally to just a general rash of bad pitching, weak hitting and sloppy play, THIS is the real heartbreaker. It is especially and arguably the MOST devastating, because it has been DESPITE these other things that the team has rallied around Ankiel's triumphant return and played well enough and hard enough to muscle themselves back into the pennant race. To find out his astounding return to MLB success was at any point aided by the use of illegal drugs completely takes the magic out of things and makes it seem less like a Disney-ready movie and more like another inevitable fall from grace that is all too common now among professional athletes. Obviously, I'm hoping his use was only temporary and extended only so far as that years worth prescribed to him in 2004. I'm hoping that the feats he's accomplished this year are unblemished by performance enhancers and that his brush with the underbelly of professional sports lasted only so long as his recovery from Tommy John surgery. I'm hoping that once the ban was placed in 2005 that he walked away and has been clean ever since. Yet what if all of that is true? What if he truly hasn't used HGH since then and has achieved his current degree of success due only to hard work and perseverance? Do the allegations then make "The Natural" any less of a phenomenon? In theory, no, of course not. However, in the court of public opinion people are always going to wonder and the more cynical are always going to assume his guilt. Unfortunately, Ankiel has no real way of proving it one way or another and he'll probably always bear the scarlet letter that so many contemporary and historical greats are saddled with. It was the perceived pureness of his improbable and unlikely story that made baseball fans believe that miracles can happen and underdogs can succeed. He was a wholesome reminder that goodness can and does occasionally prevail in major league baseball. I fear that no matter how this all pans out, his accomplishments will forever be linked to this alleged dark spot in his history. That makes me unbearably sad.

It would make me feel a lot better to hear Rick Ankiel himself publicly address and clarify the claims. Cardinal fans, hell baseball fans in general, need to hear what he has to say. After all, Ankiel's story doesn't just pertain to St. Louis fans anymore. We ALL deserve to hear his side of the story and frankly, he deserves to tell it. As we head into a pivotal series against the Diamondbacks and Brandon Webb tonight, the last thing the Cardinals need is another gutwrenching setback to shift the focus. These guys are obviously scrappy, but one has to wonder how much more they can possibly take. Make me a believer again, Rick!

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