It's still cheating

Sappy fraud Ken Rosenthal's latest nonsensical page vomit revolves around Paul Byrd's explanation for why he used HGH...

(Byrd) said that he had a legitimate explanation for using HGH — three doctors had diagnosed him as suffering from adult growth-hormone deficiency.

Awesome. That is a legitimate reason for taking HGH...if you want to live a normal life. Not as far as baseball is concerned though. In the interview Byrd goes on to explain that his real issue was that the Mitchell Report said Byrd had taken the HGH as treatment for a tumor, which he never told Mitchell investigators. Okay. He also says the HGH helped him function normally. Good. I truly hope Paul Byrd is experiencing a more normal existence due in part to the benefits of having taken HGH and undergoing other treatments. At the end of the day though, he took HGH and was a Moajor League baseball player. The question for us all is and has been and will continue to be, did the player ingest or inject or do something that allowed him to perform at a level otherwise incapable? For Paul Byrd? Yeah. I'm sorry about his hormone deficiency. I'm glad you're healthy now. But not everyone can do everything. You can't take a 36-inch tall kid on the 45 inches and up ride at Disneyland because he's wearing stilts. You can't put paddles on an armless swimmer and sign him up for the Olympics. As Walter says in The Big Lebowski, "Smoky, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules." Sometimes, shit happens and things get fucked and you can't play baseball.

Q: How much — if at all — do you regret using HGH?
A: At this time in my life I do not regret using HGH. It really helped me health-wise and personally with my marriage. As far as the baseball field goes, I was able to throw bullpens and recover better (like a normal pitcher) but I have recently learned by talking to doctors that my recovery could have been a by-product of the hormone allowing me to get sleep so I am working on that now through different means. What I don't miss about HGH — the reoccurring temptation to take more than the prescribed dose and possibly increase the velocity of my fastball.

I like the whole parenthetical mention of the baseball benefits of HGH, like actually throwing harder would have been the only real benefit. Not the getting to throw at all. Getting to "throw bullpens and recover better (like a normal pitcher)," due to having taken HGH, means you cheated.