My quips aren't as biting.

My turns of phrase are simply turning my stomach.

I'm having trouble coming up with another word for thesaurus.

I need help.

As my peers spin a yarn that would make Mitch Albom weep, I can't rite anymore.

See what I mean.

I'm desperate, sort of like what Rick Ankiel must have felt after he couldn't find the strike zone with a GPS device.

In 2004, with his career in jeopardy and his cannon of a left arm shooting buckshot, Ankiel received a year's supply of human growth hormone to help him recover more quickly.

Three years later, he turned himself into the most feared hitter this side of A-Rod.

Thanks, HGH.

I need some of that. But instead of human growth hormone, I need human gibe hormone.

Plus, the "S" on my keyboard keeps sssticking. A little HGH should take care of that — get my fingers working better to gently slide across that "S" key.

Where's that number for Victor Conti ...

There. That's better.

Anything to get an edge.

Three years ago, when Mark McGwire was sidestepping questions like a Browns quarterback from the Steelers rush and Rafael Palmeiro was wagging his finger at Congress and doing his best George Herbert Walker Bush impression — read my lips, no steroids — we all thought this cheating thing was relegated to just a few bad apples.

Now it appears the whole bushel is tainted.

Heck, even Jay Gibbons and Troy Glaus — players who will never be mentioned in the same breath with Mickey Mantle or Hank Aaron (except for this sentence) — are on the stuff.

Is no one in baseball clean?

There probably are players who are performing au natural, but not as many as we thought just a week ago.

Take one look at Dmitri Young trying to field a grounder, and you know the only human growth hormone he is on is a Big Mac.

Glance at Prince Fielder saunter up to the plate, and you can scratch his physique off the too-good-to-be-real list.

Bartolo Colon? Probably clean. Ray King? May have eaten a human, but likely did not take a human growth hormone.

And, that's probably about it.

I guess most major league 'roiders didn't listen to their moms when they said, "If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off, too?"

Apparently the baseball answer to "If your friends stuck a syringe full of HGH in their buttocks, would you?" is a most definite "You bet!"

It's going to take years, a decade maybe, for baseball to clean up this mess. It may never get cleaned up.

As fans, all we can do is roll our eyes at the latest name to be dropped and move on, accepting the fact that Player A is probably full of HGH.

And root for the fat, out-of-shape guys. They are the only ones who are legit.

So, go David Wells.

I wonder if Rick Reilly is on a human gibe hormone?

Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.