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. (We certainly aren't going to stop wearing his jersey or anything.) And that, friends, is what this story is really about: It's not about HGH, it's not about the Cardinals, it's not even about Rick Ankiel. 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.

But as much as we try to make it 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. (And we 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.

walt jocketty told the daily news: "If it's true, obviously it would be very tragic, along with everything else we've had happen to us this year." i agree wth walt. the steroid-abuse saga has a million hypocrites and scoundrels, from the commissioner down through the general managers, the coaches and on-field managers, the beat writers and broadcasters, the trainers, the agents . . . . . all those guys have their fingerprints on the syringes. and now they're all running away from what they did; nobody wants to talk about it. why won't they talk? if they didn't do anything wrong, why would they choose to give the impression that they did?

i hope ankiel will bat these allegations out of the park as effortlessly as he has been swatting big-league pitches over the wall.

Why? Because everyone already thought Bonds was juicing. It was already built in to our definition of him. Bonds' pain for fans was a dull chronic one; Ankiel's is a shattering career-ender.

With Ankiel, it is truly heart-breaking: His comeback story was one of the best of the year/decade/era, in a year where we needed it. He was a restore-your-faith-in-the-game poster guy.

But yet his instant legend is as performance-enhanced as the rest of them. (Honestly? Damn you, Rick Ankiel, for obliterating what was left of my sincere faith in the sport.)

We suppose that if we stopped loving everyone who took HGH before it was banned, we would have few players left to love.