Drug gave Santangelo a lease on baseball life

You hear all this stuff about steroids and HGH, like it’s a really bad thing, but where would the former Dodger, F.P. Santangelo, be today had it not been for such stuff?

We might never have met.

I go to Dairy Queen all the time, but who is to say I would have ever gone into the one where he might’ve been working?

Do you think he’d have the sports-talk show he has now in Sacramento had he not juiced up and gone on to play for the Oakland A’s, San Francisco Giants and Dodgers, thereby giving him the Major League profile to get such a show?

Do you think he would be providing TV analysis on the Giants and Barry Bonds had he never used HGH?

The first paragraph I wrote on Page 2 -- more than seven years ago -- focused on Santangelo:

“Before we go any further, someone needs to explain the ground rules. I’m standing in the Dodgers clubhouse on my first day on this new job obeying the sign that has three red arrows pointing to it: ‘PLAYERS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT.’

“Now if I can’t go there, why can F.P. Santangelo?”

Now I know why. That’s where they must’ve been shooting ‘em up.

Santangelo got another career boost this week when the Mitchell Report lumped him into the same category as Roger Clemens, Kevin Brown and Paul Lo Duca. That now makes him a big name in the cow-bell town, and speaking of Sacramento, where would the Governor be today without steroids?

As for Santangelo, he told his radio audience that TV reporters were hiding in the bushes outside his home after the Mitchell Report surfaced.

Obviously, they weren’t well-hidden, although I’d hide my face if assigned to interview a morning radio guy in the sticks. If they were there to interview Santangelo, though, why were they hiding?

I wonder if one of the side effects of HGH is imagining you’re Paris Hilton.

Anyway, for months Santangelo has been telling his radio audience he never used the stuff, which was believable given his stats.

But after his name surfaced, he wouldn’t shut up, telling the Sacramento Bee, ESPN.com and his radio audience he had briefly used the stuff. (You notice how everyone who has now admitted to using HGH, a la Andy Pettitte, did so, but only briefly?)

“I admitted it and I faced the music,” Santangelo told ESPN.com with ESPN.com then reporting that the admission had “touched some listeners and infuriated others.”

Sounds like the makings for good radio ratings in a place where there isn’t a whole lot going on in sports. He’ll probably get a raise out of this, and tell me again where Santangelo might be had he not taken such stuff.

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear him lean into the microphone one morning and tell everyone, “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”

BELOW THE “Two-strike count” headline in The Times the other day, there was another line: “Baseball will survive but the achievements of so many, including some revered Dodgers, will forever be tainted.”

Do you think Eric Gagne, Lo Duca, Brown and others really care? Do you care? Given the few highlights that Dodgers fans can recall since 1988, would you have been better off had ‘Game’ not been ‘Over’?

Gagne couldn’t make it as a starter, was sent to the minors, bulked up and came on like Superman. Do you think he feels badly about the records he compiled, or the $10-million contract he just received from the Milwaukee Brewers?

Lo Duca spent the better part of nine years in the minors before really coming on. Would you have enjoyed watching the Dodgers play without Lo Duca?

This whole thing is a farce, a revelation dealing more with big-time sports’ hypocrisy than anything else. Sen. George Mitchell recommended no punishment, but Commissioner Bud Selig said it remained a possibility.

Yet, he has already met with the Angels’ Gary Matthews Jr., who purchased HGH, but since no one could prove he didn’t order the vials to decorate his home, he can carry on.

Beyond the shock value with no attached financial or punitive recrimination, it’s baseball business as usual with Selig predicting attendance records will be set again.

Steroids have been on their way out for some time, the new drug of choice being HGH, and right now every player in the game could be on it and there’s no test to say differently.

We might learn the names of the users in another few years or so, but in the meantime every one will have a good time.

OVER THE last year or so, the McCourts’ image improved, the credit going to the Tipper Gore Lady, who essentially advised them to shut up.

The problem with the McCourts is that they spend more time working on their image than improving the team, never quite satisfied. They recently hired another image consultant, this one a dentist also working in PR for the Boston Red Sox -- forcing Tipper to give her two-week notice.

To give you an idea of the kind of laughing gas the Dentist has in store for Dodgers fans, here’s what he said in a news release upon his Boston departure:

“The swirl of emotions I feel befits the November winds of Boston. . . . Although miles will test the friendships I have made here, so many are so deep that diminution seems incomprehensible. . . . I have no doubt that the Red Sox are poised to continue their ascent to the stratosphere of sports and entertainment organizations.

“I’m in awe to have had a front-row seat to watch this ensemble that has saved Fenway Park . . . may we meet again in a World Series, with Neil Diamond singing in person to Honey Fitz’s great-granddaughter, ‘Sweet Caroline.’ ”

There’s more, but I’m feeling a little ill.

Best regards to Tipper, known also as Camille Johnston, who really was a pro’s pro.

OH, AND goodbye to Mark Hendrickson. The opposition will miss you.

TODAY’S LAST word comes from Kings PR guy Jeff Moeller: “I’m too busy eating,” he said when asked to arrange an interview Saturday night with the team’s publicity-starved president or GM.

Tipper might not be out of a job for long after all.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at

t.j.simers@latimes.com. For previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.