1998 all over again?

Friday, September 7, 2007 | Feedback | Print Entry

It feels like we have been transported in time, and it is the summer of 1998 all over again. A St. Louis slugger is doing astonishing things, except this time it's Rick Ankiel and not Mark McGwire, and if you were to project his work of 26 games over a full season, he would be approaching what Roger Maris did; Ankiel would be on a pace to hit 56 homers.

In the midst of 1998, Associated Press reporter Steve Wilstein observed that McGwire had a bottle of androstenedione in his locker, not proof that McGwire used steroids but eyebrow-raising stuff. And now T.J. Quinn and three other New York Daily News reporters have a story that a year's supply of human growth hormone was delivered to Ankiel three years ago, not quite a smoking gun, but something close to it.

 
 

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  • Buster Olney Buster Olney

    Buster Olney is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He began covering baseball in 1989, as the Nashville Banner's beat reporter assigned to the Triple-A Nashville Sounds. Later, he covered the San Diego Padres (1993-94), the Baltimore Orioles ('95-96), the New York Mets ('97) and the Yankees ('98-2001). Olney joined ESPN The Magazine in 2003, after six years at The New York Times, and he's the author of the Times' best-seller "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty," a book about the Paul O'Neill-Tino Martinez Yankees dynasty of 1996-01.

    He grew up in central Vermont collecting baseball cards and listening to Red Sox, Expos, Phillies and Pirates radio broadcasts, and was a rabid fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He graduated from Vanderbilt University the same year as hoops legend Will Perdue, and ranks among the all-time leading scorers in pickup basketball at Memorial Gym. He claims to have witnessed the Commodores' winning football season in 1982 (although anthropologists have not yet confirmed this).

    Olney also contributes to ESPN.com, ESPN Radio, ESPNEWS, "SportsCenter" and "Baseball Tonight."

    Follow Buster on Twitter: @Buster_ESPN

    Ask Buster a question: Buster's Mailbag

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