Pettite admits to hGH usage

[Crazysilver03]

Andy Pettitte admitted Saturday to using HGH on two occasions back in 2002.

"If what I did was an error in judgment on my part, I apologize," Pettitte said in a statement released by his agent. "I accept responsibility for those two days." Pettitte is admitting that former trainer Brian McNamee's statements in the Mitchell Report were accurate, even though he must know he's burying good friend Roger Clemens in the process. If McNamee was telling the truth about Pettitte's usage, then why should anyone believe he's lying about personally injecting Clemens with steroids?

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-pettitte-hghadmission&prov=ap&type=lgns

After Clemens denied it so much, this would seem to put a whole in his story.

[Jagwar]

Pettitte said he tried HGH on two occasions, stressing he did it to heal faster and not enhance his performance. He emphasized he never used steroids.

"If what I did was an error in judgment on my part, I apologize," Pettitte said Saturday in a statement released by his agent. "I accept responsibility for those two days."

Someone tell Andy that taking HGH to heal faster is inherently enhancing performance.

"This is it -- two days out of my life; two days out of my entire career, when I was injured and on the disabled list," he said. "I wasn't looking for an edge. I was looking to heal."

See my comment right above

[TGO]

"If what I did was an error in judgment on my part, I apologize."

I don't suggest ever using this line to your boss, wife, or anyone else.

[Moose Milligan]

What a dunce he is.

Anyone really believe he only tried it for two days? Did he rocket (no pun intended) his way back into playing shape in 48 hours?

What a joke and what a half assed apology.

[Elston Gunnn]

Someone tell Andy that taking HGH to heal faster is inherently enhancing performance.

See my comment right above

Then getting a cortisone shot is enhancing performance.

[Jagwar]

Then getting a cortisone shot is enhancing performance.

Isn't Cortisone more of a painkiller? There is no healing involved at all, and it could actually make things worse. It also isn't illegal or banned

Pettite used HGH to gain an advantage, pure and simple. He used it to skirt the normal healing time from his injury in order to get on the mound more quickly.

He is a cheater, plain and simple.

[RShack]

Isn't Cortisone more of a painkiller?

No, it's not. Cortisone is a steroid. That's what it is. It is used to reduce inflammation in joints, and is administered by injection. It is not in any way a painkiller. Sometimes they mix it with a painkiller (sometimes Novocaine) for short-term relief because the Cortisone takes a day or two to take effect.

[bird watcher]

I don't blame him. I would probably have used something too if I thought there were millions of dollars at stake and there was no testing.

[Elston Gunnn]

Isn't Cortisone more of a painkiller? There is no healing involved at all, and it could actually make things worse. It also isn't illegal or banned

Pettite used HGH to gain an advantage, pure and simple. He used it to skirt the normal healing time from his injury in order to get on the mound more quickly.

He is a cheater, plain and simple.

No, cortisone reduces inflammation.

Whether it's true or not, many players believe HGH will help them heal faster and get back to playing faster. I think lost in the PHD discussion is the fact that, although there are some bad seeds in MLB that use PED's to make money, most guys who make it to the MLB level didn't get there without some sort of passion for the game and in a lot of cases (IMO) this is what drives players to break rules, risk health and even break the law to continue to play.

I love baseball and if I had the ability to play at a high level and then it looked like it was slipping away due to injury, I really can't say if I wouldn't exhaust all avenues, legal or not, to keep playing. I'd like to think I'd take the high road, but I can't honestly say without being in that position. Almost like a "crime of passion". Let's all try to be honest and put ourselves in the shoes of someone who has a deep passion for the game and is desperate to not have it end.

[CrimsonTribe]

I don't blame him. I would probably have used something too if I thought there were millions of dollars at stake and there was no testing.

My sentiments exactly.

[RShack]

I love baseball and if I had the ability to play at a high level and then it looked like it was slipping away due to injury, I really can't say if I wouldn't exhaust all avenues, legal or not, to keep playing.

I don't see what's wrong with using whatever best helps you heal up. That's what medicine is for. That's the whole point of medicine. That's pretty much the entire reason the field of medicine got invented. I don't know what Pettitte did or didn't do, I'm not talking about him, but if you can't take stuff to help you heal, then maybe this anti-drug stuff has gone too far.

[Migrant Redbird]

I don't see what's wrong with using whatever best helps you heal up. That's what medicine is for. That's the whole point of medicine. That's pretty much the entire reason the field of medicine got invented. I don't know what Petite did or didn't do, I'm not talking about him, but if you can't take stuff to help you heal, then maybe this anti-drug stuff has gone too far.

And people tend to lose sight of the fact that we ordinary citizens use a lot of medicines and "nutritional supplements" off label as well. We go to chiropractors, acupuncturists, and other assorted "quacks" because we don't trust that genuine Medical Doctors ("M.D.'s) will be able to heal us up as quickly as we'd like. We get bee stings to treat arthritis and medicate ourselves with any number of other homeopathic cures. Ballplayers are like us in that regard; they aren't always satisfied with how their doctors have been treating them and they seek out alternative remedies, based upon recommendations of trusted friends and family members.

[Gurgi]

And people tend to lose sight of the fact that we ordinary citizens use a lot of medicines and "nutritional supplements" off label as well. We go to chiropractors, acupuncturists, and other assorted "quacks" because we don't trust that genuine Medical Doctors ("M.D.'s) will be able to heal us up as quickly as we'd like. We get bee stings to treat arthritis and medicate ourselves with any number of other homeopathic cures. Ballplayers are like us in that regard; they aren't always satisfied with how their doctors have been treating them and they seek out alternative remedies, based upon recommendations of trusted friends and family members.

And your point is what exactly?

[Migrant Redbird]

And your point is what exactly?

I don't think it's fair to be hyper critical of injured ball players who venture beyond the most conventional medicine in attempting to heal up their injuries and return to play more rapidly. There's a significant difference between using steroids and/or HGH for medicinal purposes and using it solely for performance enhancement.

Yes, some of the ball players violated the law to obtain the drugs for their treatments and I don't condone breaking the law. However, I also recognize that most of us break some law or another practically every day, so I don't expect ball players to be significantly different than the rest of us in that regard.

Once you accept that it's OK to break some laws (e.g., sitting in the front of a bus if you're black, picketing too closely to the funeral of a soldier who died in Iraq, sharing a joint with a school chum, crossing the street in the middle of the block, pitching a cigarette butt out your car window, driving a couple miles per hour above the speed limit), then you've entered relativistic territory where you -- the individual -- decide which laws you're going to respect and observe and which ones you're going to ignore or deliberately break as a personal protest against unjust or stupid laws.

[RShack]

Hey Rshack, if Roger Clemens says he used steroids for the last 12 years because it helped his arm heal faster between starts and generally made his arm feel better, are you ok with that?

I'm not talking about what some guy claims. I'm just talking about the issue of injuries and healing. When it comes to steroids, there's lots of perfectly good healing reasons for taking them. Cortisone shots, for example. That has nothing to do with people using them for body-building. The fact that some guy might BS about it has no bearing on that. Maybe they need to end up with official MLB-hired doctors hanging around with the team like a trainer, deciding what's legit and what isn't. But banning stuff that does in fact aid healing is BS, IMO. And, as I already said, I have no news about whether Pettitte is telling the truth or lying like a rug.