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ST. LOUIS -- A couple of days after announcing he was giving up pitching to make a quixotic attempt at rebuilding his baseball career as an outfielder, Rick Ankiel stepped into the Cardinals' spring training clubhouse and found his locker had been moved from the west side, where the pitchers dress, to the opposite wall.

"You're one of us now," one veteran position player told him. "You should be with us."

A second-round draft pick and can't-miss prospect, Ankiel shot through the minors as a flame-throwing lefty, making his major league debut in 2000 at age 20, winning 11 games and striking out 194 batters in 175 innings to earn the start in the first game of the NL Division Series against the Atlanta Braves. That game, however, proved to be the beginning of the end of his pitching career, with Ankiel throwing a record nine wild pitches in four postseason innings.

He pitched just 34 innings in the majors after that, walking 26, hitting five batters and throwing six wild pitches before missing all of 2002 and most of the next two seasons with arm problems. He tried one final comeback in the spring of 2005 but, still troubled by pain and wildness, he eventually confessed to Cardinals General Manager Walt Jocketty that he couldn't handle the disappointment any longer.

Jocketty, however, had other ideas.

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PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. - St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Rick Ankiel, baseball's feel-good story of the season, received a 12-month supply of human growth hormone in 2004 from a Florida pharmacy that was part of a national illegal prescription drug-distribution operation, the Daily News has learned.


Ankiel, who flamed out mentally and physically as a pitcher earlier this decade, only to return to the majors as a slugging outfielder last month, has evoked comparisons this season to Roy Hobbs and Babe Ruth. He hit two home runs, a double and had seven RBI yesterday against the Pirates at Busch Stadium, giving him nine home runs in 81 at-bats since his remarkable major league comeback began on Aug. 10.


According to records obtained by The News and sources close to the controversy surrounding anti-aging clinics that dispense illegal prescription drugs, Ankiel received eight shipments of HGH from Signature Pharmacy in Orlando from January to December 2004, including the brand-name injectable drugs Saizen and Genotropin. Signature is the pharmacy at the forefront of Albany District Attorney David Soares' two-year investigation into illegal Internet prescription drug sales, which has brought 22 indictments and nine convictions.