Rick Ankiel Afterthoughts: A Response to Deadspin

Posted by Bad Kermit
Posted on September 11, 2007

“Oh, I didn’t see you there. I was just cutting myself.”Last Friday, after the news that Rick Ankiel had been prescribed a 12-month supply of HGH during his 2004 recovery, Will “Emo” Leitch penned a completely ludicrous article about the incident entitled “What We Lost, And What We Never Had.” Look, I appreciate what Deadspin has done for blogging, particularly sports blogging. But the self-important attitude of the Deadspin writers and commentators reared its arrogant head again, as Leitch skewed the boneheaded actions of yet another mouthbreathing Cardinal to feed his own ego and, apparently, to practice some emo poetry. After the jump (why do bloggers say that?) is the article in full, with my own comments interspersed.

The Rick Ankiel thing, for Cardinals fans, has always been about hope.

What “thing”? His monumental meltdown during the 2000 playoffs? His soul patch? His stupid striped socks? His drug addict dad? Oh, you mean the “heroic comeback” thing? You should probably mention that. So, every Cardinal fan is hoping that they, too, can some day overcome the tragedy of looking like Cotton Weary (thanks, Dolan) to rise the ranks of the Cardinals minor league system and become the next Jason Simontacchi before Jason Simontacchi was even Jason Simontacchi? Neat!

There was hope in 2000, when we thought we had discovered a 19-year-old Steve Carlton. There was hope in 2001 when we believed a young man could conquer his demons.

What gave you hope in 2001, exactly? The 7 home runs Ankiel surrendered in 24 innings pitched? The 7.13 ERA? The 2.083 WHIP? Or maybe the 22.50 ERA and 5.00 WHIP in AAA Memphis? I guess, by your standards, I should still have some hope that Ben Christiansen will be in the rotation next year.

There was hope in 2003 when we anguished as another young star went under the Tommy John knife.

Hope and anguish! Together at last! Come on, Cardinal fan. What the hell do you know about young stars catching Tommy John disease? The Cubs organization has had that operation done so much, their next 5 Tommy John surgeries are free.

And, yes, there was hope in 2004, when we cheered as the prodigal son returned to rousing applause that was the sonic equivalent of a wool blanket on a cold November night.

You guys all took your houses off the cinder blocks and drove to San Diego for Ankiel’s return? Or maybe you waited for his second appearance and drove to Los Angeles? Wow. I guess you’re not the self-proclaimed “best fans in baseball” for no reason. Also, have you ever actually slept under a wool blanket? I doubt it. For some reason, I don’t have you pegged as “military,” the sole remaining human beings who actually sleep under wool blankets. The itchiness of a wool blanket must torment you more than the spirits of the long-dead do when they come to visit you after the sun goes down.

There was always an innocence to the hope; against all rational thought, we believed in Rick Ankiel because if you could believe in him, you could believe in anything.

Any reason that isn’t two sentences there? Oh, because this is the “poetry” part of the post. You’re right, though. If Cardinals fans could believe in Ankiel, I’m sure they could also believe that dentists are the Devil’s tool and that hooking up with their cousins is okay as long as they only use their mouths.

It made Cardinals fans proud of themselves; it was through our support, we believed, that Ankiel could frame his various comebacks.

The other day I laid a huge turd. It was so massive, that, as I kept trying to flush it away, it kept coming back, poking its head out of the toilet drain and saying hello. It didn’t smell or look any better as it kept resurfacing. It made me so proud, though, that I had to call in Mrs. Kermit to check it out before I finally had to break it up with a toilet brush. So you’re saying Ankiel was the Cardinal fan equivalent of that eye-watering turd? I completely agree.

We would be patient; we would wait for him in a way we couldn’t see other fanbases doing.

Kerry Wood and Mark Prior say hello. And fuck you.

It came from the very best part of us.

That would be the “NOW LEAVING THE STATE OF MISSOURI” sign, right?

We were so proud of ourselves.

I’m surprised, since you guys never take yourselves too seriously. (I love when he says, “It may be a cookie cutter stadium, but you can never replace it.” You know what “cookie cutter stadium” means, right?)

Whatever your thoughts on the jaw-dropping New York Daily News story this morning, that innocence is now replaced with … something else.

The only jaw that dropped after reading that story was Ankiel’s, as the weight of his suddenly-enormous jaw was far too much for his masseter muscles to hold. Also, you have to tell me with what my innocence has been replaced, Will! Tell me now! I MUST KNOW WHAT TO THINK AND ONLY YOU CAN TELL ME!

It’s worth noting — if you’ll allow us, as a commenter amusingly put it this morning, to get our Tony Snow on for a moment — that this isn’t a case of a guy taking a bunch of HGH, becoming a superhuman and pounding a ton of home runs. In 2004, Rick Ankiel was still a pitcher, recovering from Tommy John surgery and rehabbing in Memphis. (We remind, as Slate pointed out, HGH is hardly a “performance enhancer;” as they put it, steroids are like doing heroin, while HGH is more like smoking weed.)

Really? Ankiel is on pace to hit 54 home runs in essentially his “rookie” year. That’s not a ton of home runs? Are you so biased that you claim that Barry Bonds holds a “silly fake record,” yet you won’t entertain the possibility that a desperate Ankiel, a laughing stock of baseball, may have done anything he could to get himself back into the game? Are you one of those people who’s going to ignore the fact that Albert Pujols’ head is twelve times the size it was when it first entered the league, or do you think that’s from all the learnin’ he’s been doing since he got to the Majors? How is Saint McGwire doing these days? Christ, I haven’t met a single Cubs fan who won’t at least admit that it is likely that Sosa wasn’t 100% natural, yet even when you delusional Cardinals fans are smacked over the head with proof, you deny. Must be that “best fans in baseball” mentality again, huh?

He was a guy who had gone through so much, so much, and was just trying to make it back to a semblance of what he once was, using a substance that was not banned by baseball at the time.

True. It also wasn’t banned by baseball at the time Gary Matthews, Jr. used it, and you were more than willing to throw him under the bus when he was caught, saying, “You know that amazing catch Gary Matthews Jr. made last year, the one that inexplicably earned him a ridiculous contract in the offseason? Done through ‘roids!” Why the harsh treatment of Matthews for going through the same struggles in his career, when you all but canonize Ankiel for being a poor, down-on-his-luck millionaire just trying to make a buck? Seems irresponsible at best, racist at worst, and Cardinal fan biased in the middle.

As anyone who saw Ankiel at that time knows, the Ankiel of 2004 has no connection to the Ankiel of 2007;

Sorry. No one really saw Ankiel in 2004. We were all too busy ducking behind our seats every time he released the ball.

that’s why his story has been so great, so transforming.

I didn’t see that movie, so I have no frame of reference.

Rick Ankiel is not hitting a ton of home runs now because he took HGH in 2004.

Perhaps you don’t understand how HGH works. While you’re brushing up, you might want to go ahead and consider getting some for Eckstein.

But yeah: Do we put that much detail into that paragraph if this is Alex Rodriguez receiving HGH, or Derrek Lee? Probably not.

Throwing out the names of two star players who have shown absolutely no signs of using performance-enhancing substances just because you don’t like them is lazy, careless, and stupid. What are you trying to do here? Make us doubt Alex Rodriguez and Derrek Lee? You should honestly be ashamed of yourself. Go put on some mascara and cut your inner thighs.

Our fellow Cardinals fans will go through similar dissembling over the next few weeks — because this isn’t going away; Ankiel is going to be remembered for this much longer than Rodney Harrison ever will — and, as Bernie Miklasz pointed out this morning, certain people will defend Ankiel no matter what, and others will think of him as a juicer until the end of time, and the truth will remain somewhere in the middle.

The truth is in the middle? So, the fact that Ankiel is the greatest, most misunderstood American hero since Josh Hancock must be “the middle,” since you wouldn’t purposely lie to your readers, right? I’m going with “juicer until the end of time,” as my “middle.”

(We certainly aren’t going to stop wearing his jersey or anything.)

Jesus Christ, you have a Rick Ankiel jersey? That’s the Cardinal equivalent of having a Mike Harkey jersey.

And that, friends, is what this story is really about: It’s not about HGH,

Yes, it is. This is tagged under “STEROIDS” on your site.

it’s not about the Cardinals,

And “ST. LOUIS CARDINALS.”

it’s not even about Rick Ankiel.

And “RICK ANKIEL.” Christ, you practically invented sports blogging. Don’t you know what tags are for?

Fourteen hours ago, Rick Ankiel was what we loved about sports: His story existed in the black-white world we demand of our sports. His story was pure; it was impossible not to be happy for him.

Nonsense. I enjoyed nothing more than the golden sombrero Ankiel put up Monday at Wrigley Field, and I was rooting against the douchebag since day one. Maybe you demand black-white from your world, but that’s just because it matches your wardrobe and skin color so perfectly.

But as much as we try to make it not so — and boy, do we try — the sports world is gray. Ankiel is not a monster or The Bad Guy now that we know he accepted HGH in 2004. But he’s not the Guy In The White Hat Here To Save Our Games we all believed — needed to believe– he was either. His story is a human one. His story is gray. It always was.

Now I know why this site is called DeadSPIN. He “accepted” HGH in 2004? Come on, man. You can use “took.” It’s okay. Also — if I may say so — what kind of obnoxious douche — and I’m speaking only hypothetically here — interrupts themselves at such a frequent — and, may I say, we live in a world where we want, no NEED, frequency — basis?

That we now realize this, so vividly, is what we truly lost, at 8 a.m. this morning, picking up our newspaper as we stepped onto the subway, the world entirely different than it had been 10 minutes before, yet, of course, exactly the same.

Thanks for clarifying that 8 a.m. is, in fact, in the morning. I had my alarm clock set COMPLETELY wrong. Also, you might want to consider — if I might give a “professional” blogger such as yourself a bit of advice — writing actual sentences instead of stringing together a series of phrases.

I don’t read Deadspin, so I can’t speak to the quality of the writing there on a regular basis, but if this “article” took more than thirty seconds to write, it was a massive waste of time.

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