Rumor: Rick Ankiel received 12-month supply of HGH

[Captain Erv]

Exclusive
Rick Ankiel received 12-month supply of HGH, News learns

BY T.J. QUINN, CHRISTIAN RED, MICHAEL O'KEEFFE, and BILL MADDEN
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS

Friday, September 7th 2007, 12:15 AM

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. - St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Rick Ankiel, baseball's feel-good story of the season, received a 12-month supply of human growth hormone in 2004 from a Florida pharmacy that was part of a national illegal prescription drug-distribution operation, the Daily News has learned.

Ankiel, who flamed out mentally and physically as a pitcher earlier this decade, only to return to the majors as a slugging outfielder last month, has evoked comparisons this season to Roy Hobbs and Babe Ruth. He hit two home runs, a double and had seven RBI yesterday against the Pirates at Busch Stadium, giving him nine home runs in 81 at-bats since his remarkable major league comeback began on Aug. 10.

According to records obtained by The News and sources close to the controversy surrounding anti-aging clinics that dispense illegal prescription drugs, Ankiel received eight shipments of HGH from Signature Pharmacy in Orlando from January to December 2004, including the brand-name injectable drugs Saizen and Genotropin. Signature is the pharmacy at the forefront of Albany District Attorney David Soares' two-year investigation into illegal Internet prescription drug sales, which has brought 22 indictments and nine convictions.

Ankiel's prescriptions were signed by Florida physician William Gogan, who provided them through a Palm Beach Gardens clinic called "The Health and Rejuvenation Center," or "THARC." The drugs were shipped to Ankiel at the clinic's address.

THARC also provided a shipment of steroids and growth hormone to former major league pitcher Steve Woodard, who pitched for Milwaukee, Cleveland, Texas and Boston during a seven-year career that ended in 2003, according to records. Woodard and Ankiel were teammates with the Triple-A Memphis Redbirds in 2004.

Ankiel lives in nearby Jupiter, Fla.

His agent, Scott Boras, would not comment yesterday, and Woodard did not return messages left on his cell phone.

"This is the first I've heard of this," Cardinals GM Walt Jocketty told The News yesterday. "If it's true, obviously it would be very tragic, along with everything else we've had happen to us this year."

The surging Cardinals have gone 16-6 in their last 22 games to become a contender for the National League Central title. The year began with manager Tony La Russa's DWI arrest in March, followed by the drunk-driving death of reliever Josh Hancock in April and the loss of ace Chris Carpenter for the season in June. Ankiel, dubbed "The Natural" in St. Louis, had been the one bit of unrestrained good news.

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.

Officials in the Albany DA's office did not respond to requests for comment last night.

MLB officials also declined comment, saying they would "look into" the allegations, but weren't sure whether any action could be taken. It is likely, however, that officials will ask to speak to Ankiel and will ask whether he used HGH beyond the time he received the shipments.

According to physician Gary Wadler, a committee member with the World Anti-Doping Agency and an associate professor of medicine at NYU, there is a limited number of reasons a healthy man in his 20s would have a medical need for HGH.

Unlike most drugs, federal law bans the use of HGH for off-label purposes: Physicians can distribute growth hormone only in connection with either treatment of a disease or another medical condition authorized by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. "You need a bona fide doctor-patient relationship and a bona fide disease to distribute growth hormone," Wadler said.

The list of possible uses of HGH by a healthy man in his mid-20s is "extremely narrow," Wadler added.

At THARC's offices in Palm Beach Gardens, owners Kevin Johnson and Donald Montano said they had not been visited by Albany investigators, but confirmed that an FDA agent had questioned them after Albany authorities raided Signature in February.

Montano smiled when asked about Ankiel.

"Yeah, I know who he is. He's having a hell of a year," Montano said. When asked directly whether Ankiel was a client, the owners referred a reporter to their attorney, Bruce Udolf.

"HIPAA rules strictly prohibit me from giving out any patient names without violating the physician/patient relationship," Udolf said of federal laws that protect against disclosure of medical records. "Secondly, under the current policies in effect, no employee at this center is permitted or authorized to give medication, like HGH, to bodybuilders or professional athletes. That's an absolute no-no."

THARC was not one of the anti-aging clinics busted by Albany, but Signature's owners are under indictment. Prosecutors have said clinics similar to THARC paid physicians to sign prescriptions for clients they never saw - a violation of New York and Florida law - which were then filled at Signature and other pharmacies and shipped to clients. The names of at least 14 professional wrestlers, New England Patriots safety Rodney Harrison (who was suspended by the NFL for four games) and Dallas Cowboys coach Wade Wilson (suspended five games and fined $100,000) have already emerged from the investigation, but Ankiel and Woodard are the first baseball players connected to Signature.

Sources said more athletes' names are expected to emerge from THARC.

Ankiel has fought numerous injuries in his career, and some athletes, such as Harrison, have said they used HGH to augment the body's healing process. It is banned in every major professional sport as a performance-enhancing drug because it builds lean muscle mass, but there is no universally accepted test for it.

Ankiel, who grew up in the shadow of the Mets' spring training complex in Port St. Lucie, Fla., has had a career fraught with promise and despair. He was USA Today's 1997 High School Player of the Year. By 2000, as a 20-year-old starter in his first full season, Ankiel looked like the next Steve Carlton, a lefty with electric stuff that earned him 11 victories.

At the end of the season, as the NL Central champion Cardinals opened their division series against the Atlanta Braves, Ankiel started the first game. In the third inning, he came apart, and the end of his pitching career wasn't far behind. With no warning or explanation, he lost control of his pitches, walked four batters and threw five wild pitches before he was removed.

Against the Mets in the NL Championship Series a week later, his trouble returned. He threw only 20 pitches before being removed, five of them sailing to the backstop. He started the 2001 season in the majors, quickly found himself in Triple-A, and by the end of the year was playing in the Rookie League.

Ankiel missed the 2002 season with an elbow sprain, and after pitching poorly for most of the season, he underwent "Tommy John" ligament-replacement surgery in July 2003. Ankiel returned to the Cardinals as a reliever in 2004, but the experiment was short-lived. He pitched in only five games, showing that he could throw strikes (nine strikeouts against one walk). But a year after his surgery, hitters found him to be easy pickings, and he finished with a 5.40 ERA.

Ankiel retired as a pitcher and was reborn as a hitter in 2005, but an injury to his left knee before the 2006 season led to surgery and another missed season. He hit 32 home runs in Triple-A this season before the Cardinals recalled him Aug. 10, stunning all of baseball as he hit three home runs in his first three games.

[SportsWorld]

I love how ESPN went for loving him to hating him in about 3 hours.
This is the top story now.

[Captain Erv]

I love how ESPN went for loving him to hating him in about 3 hours.
This is the top story now.

They still must be skeptical about reporting anything. ESPN.com has absolutely nothing about it.

[SportsWorld]

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti ... 2/70907002

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.

[WEFFPIM]

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070906/SPORTS12/70907002

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.

And there's the problem. Now nothing will probably happen to him since he no longer takes it (supposedly).

[SportsWorld]

Hopefully this story messes with his head.

[WEFFPIM]

Hopefully this story messes with his head.

It'll certainly take a great story and turn it into hell for him on the road

[ReasonablySober]

This just bugs the hell out of me. He was injured. He used HGH to get healthy before there was a ban on it. He hasn't been linked to the sale of it since it was banned. I don't see a problem.

[Kerb Hohl]

This just bugs the hell out of me. He was injured. He used HGH to get healthy before there was a ban on it. He hasn't been linked to the sale of it since it was banned. I don't see a problem.

I see a lot wrong with it, personally. I don't care if he hasn't been linked to it since then. There are 100s of other places he could be getting it from that we don't know about. If we go by this method, Barry Bonds is only guilty of getting steroids applied to his body once or twice and he thought it was flackseed oil. Even though everyone knows that the guy was roiding in unhealthy amounts for numerous years, he's only been linked to it once so clearly he only applied steroids once. Also, Bonds is still smacking way more homers than he should be at age 42 or whatever he is. I'm sure after the league started going after him that he has been clean as a whistle since. Myself and many others would probably agree that he still benefits from the advantages of taking that "flackseed oil" in 2001 or whenever he did.

While the rule is "innocent until proven guilty", I'm allowed to assume whatever I want. I'll assume that a few various players who were suspended may have just been caught taking the wrong supplement. I will also assume that Rick Ankiel, as awesome of a story as it was, cannot transform from a touted pitcher that could hit the ball out of the park form time to time into Babe Ruth in this short a period of time...a transformation that was started the day he took HGH to "recover" from his injury.

I don't really put any stock into it being banned/not banned...maybe he got smart and had somebody else buy it when it was officially banned. If I were a baseball player in today's game, I would retire from baseball completely from a sore thumb. I would begin taking extreme doses of HGH to treat this sore thumb. I would then make a glorious comeback and not be persecuted because I was not under MLB rule when I took he HGH.

[trwi7]

He obviously bought it, saved it and is using it now so he could become the main headline on ESPN.

[Kerb Hohl]

He obviously bought it, saved it and is using it now so he could become the main headline on ESPN.

Ah yes, I forgot that there is only one HGH vendor in the world and that HGH affects a person only for a few weeks to a month. After that, all muscle mass built from it evaporates.

[paulpressey25]

Buster Olney's written a great piece on this today. Essentially his take is that there probably wasn't a great reason for Ankiel to be taking this back in 2004 per what some doctors said and that Baseball needs to do something about this.

You can't test for HGH right now, and MLB hasn't done what the Olympics have done, which is archive blood tests so that when a test for HGH is developed you can go back and test archived samples. Olney wondered why the heck MLB and Selig and George Mitchell are doing this big steroids investigation yet they don't do a damn thing to close the HGH loophole.

I have no doubt Ankiel probably used the stuff heavily. And probably a bunch of other players as well may still be using it. Until you tell me that baseball has a test for this to deter things, this is a massive loophole.

[BuckFan25226]

This just bugs the hell out of me. He was injured. He used HGH to get healthy before there was a ban on it. He hasn't been linked to the sale of it since it was banned. I don't see a problem.

As shocking as it may be, I don't find it to be a big problem either.

I liked what Peter Gammons had to say about it. The guy wasn't even an outfielder yet. He had just had 2 arm operations, one being Tommy John Surgery. And HGH is known to help recover from injury faster. While some may see it as unethical or wrong. He did recieve it when it was legal.

On top of all that, he's not a big guy and hasn't really gotten any bigger since he was 20 years old. I'll admit, I am biased. But I still love the guy and what he's done.


Peter Gammons link http://sports-ak.espn.go.com/mlb/index

[ReasonablySober]

I'm closer to what Neyer had to say:

Hmm, let's see here ... he stopped receiving the banned substance before it was banned? And if true, "obviously it would be very tragic"? Gosh, I don't know. Unfortunate, sure. Inconvenient, absolutely. But it's very tragic when a professional athlete gains the same edge that so many of his colleagues have gained? And probably won't be punished?

No, today the Rick Ankiel Story isn't nearly as spiffy as it was just yesterday. But I have to tell you, I've got a really hard time getting worked up over this news.

[Kerb Hohl]

I'm not denying that he is only a little fish in a big sea of HGH. I know very well that other guys have done it. It just bothers me that people pick and choose who to believe and who to give a pass to. No one in a million years would believe Bonds or Mcgwire or Sosa but oh yeah, Roger Clemens didn't pay Grimsley to retract his statement that he saw him taking performance-enhancers or anything. Oh, and Rick Ankiel deserves a free pass because he was injured and is a feel-good story.

[BuckFan25226]

I'm not denying that he is only a little fish in a big sea of HGH. I know very well that other guys have done it. It just bothers me that people pick and choose who to believe and who to give a pass to. No one in a million years would believe Bonds or Mcgwire or Sosa but oh yeah, Roger Clemens didn't pay Grimsley to retract his statement that he saw him taking performance-enhancers or anything. Oh, and Rick Ankiel deserves a free pass because he was injured and is a feel-good story.

I see you compared Bonds' situation on page 1. Which I believe is apples and oranges. Like in this article,.....http://www.slate.com/id/2162473/nav/tap1/ .... comparing performancing enahncing drugs to the war on drugs in America. HGH is Marijuana as anabolic steroids is to shooting up heroin.

The bottom line, what if Ankiel simply stopped when MLB made the drug illegal? To assume he is till taking it is a blind accusation. And as I said before, he hasn't really gotten any bigger since he was a rookie at 20 years old. Like DB said, I'm in the same boat as Neyer. It does put a tiny black cloud over this Roy Hobbs feel good story. But all in all I don't see it as much of an issue.

[Kerb Hohl]

-= original quote snipped =-




I see you compared Bonds' situation on page 1. Which I believe is apples and oranges. Like in this article,.....http://www.slate.com/id/2162473/nav/tap1/ .... comparing performancing enahncing drugs to the war on drugs in America. HGH is Marijuana as anabolic steroids is to shooting up heroin.

The bottom line, what if Ankiel simply stopped when MLB made the drug illegal? To assume he is till taking it is a blind accusation. And as I said before, he hasn't really gotten any bigger since he was a rookie at 20 years old. Like DB said, I'm in the same boat as Neyer. It does put a tiny black cloud over this Roy Hobbs feel good story. But all in all I don't see it as much of an issue.

You can't use the size argument all the time when saying somebody did or didn't use steroids. Alex Sanchez was the first guy caught under the new policy and has 6 HR in 5 years. Sometimes a guy may not make a Bonds-esque transformation but he may develop tree trunks for arms and lose that beer gut.

Yeah, HGH probably is not as bad as steroids in terms of how much it can help. I will give you a counter-link to yours, presenting...Gary Matthews Jr. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/s ... yerId=4080 One of the only players we can use as a barometer for what HGH really does. Surprise, in the last 3 years (he was accused for last year but the HGH era seems to have really started in '03 or '04) he has put up record numbers in basically every statistical category, and he is playing a record amount of games.

How about this link, http://mlb.mlb.com/pa/news/article.jsp? ... &fext=.jsp
Yeah, that is Jason Grimsley...the guy getting HGH sent directly to his home.

Now if you're telling me that if a guy can make a miraculous recovery from a horrific surgery that it wouldn't help him gain strength or build muscle mass quicker? It's not like HGH says "oh, looks like you're injured I can help you out!" But then when you aren't hurt it says "Sorry, you don't have anything torn or broken...I can't build muscle and bones at alarming speeds." No, it helps you build muscle mass and rejuvenates you. In some ways, thats great...there are some guys that we feel bad for that really just can't stay off the DL like a Kerry Wood or Prior or Sheets or something and it would be cool if Prior and Wood's careers could have been revived with this stuff. Problem is, I could go down with a season ending ankle injury that doesn't exist and then spend the next season taking HGH and "rebuilding my muscle" while my team pays me to do it. Or I could just take the stuff for the heck of it.

Finally, in your own article I noticed this:

If growth hormone doesn't help, why are athletes breaking league rules to get it? And if it doesn't hurt, why are there league rules against it in the first place? Widespread belief in the efficacy of HGH dates back to a 1990 article in the New England Journal of Medicine. A research team led by Daniel Rudman of the Medical College of Wisconsin gave regular growth hormone injections to a dozen men over the age of 60. At the end of the six-month treatment period, the test subjects had denser bones, thicker skin, less fat, and more lean body tissue. The paper likened these effects to a reversal of "10 to 20 years of aging."

Ok, so I see that apparently those guys had half the hormones you and I do at a younger age. But come on, you can still raise the level of ours by adding more...and look at the results...less fat, more lean body tissue, denser bones. If that COULD be applied to a 28 year old hitter how would that NOT help them out? Maybe the effects would not be as great, but what if a 30 year old hitter could transform himself into his 24 year old self with less body fat and stronger bones...yeah, probably wouldn't help him out at all, you're right.

Let's equate baseball to getting behind the wheel. So 'roids are like heroin and HGH is like smoking pot? If I get behind the wheel under the influence of heroin, I don't know from experience, but I'm assuming most parties on the road are in trouble.

If I take a few hits off my friend's joint just like taking a small daily dose of HGH, things aren't so bad. My driving is almost unimpaired just as the only difference with my HGH is maybe my leg isn't as sore when I wake up. Now, if I smoke 4 joints and 3 bowls or I inject 5 times the amount of HGH that I should be having...what happens now? Now I see that stop light but I don't put my foot on the gas. Or, my right arm "recovers" from its injury that didn't exist. So now, it is stronger, bigger, and more lean. Now balls are flying out of the park.

[Kerb Hohl]

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/s ... id=3009424

Great article matching my thoughts.

[livestrong4ever]

This just bugs the hell out of me. He was injured. He used HGH to get healthy before there was a ban on it. He hasn't been linked to the sale of it since it was banned. I don't see a problem.

You make it seem like he did not know he was doing wrong, he needed a illegal prescription to even get it. This guy knew he was cheating this guy knew he wouldn't get caught and thats why he used HGH. It doesn't matter if was banned or not at the time.

[paulpressey25]

I didn't catch the part about Troy Glauss getting Steroids during 2003 and 2004......

At what point can we have any confidence whose statistics are legit and whose are enhanced?