Jim Parque: From UCLA star, surprising 13-game winner in 2000, and admitted HGH user. If you read his HGH “story,” you almost want to sympathize with the cheater. Why shouldn’t the guy have been able to use HGH - which wasn’t banned by MLB - to improve his recovery time following a torn labrum?

I felt disgusted, bitter, guilty and — most of all — scared. Scared was the key word. I was married, had a child on the way and had bills to pay. For the first time in my life, baseball potentially was going to end. I had eaten and breathed baseball for 20-plus years, and now it was being ripped from my soul and I could do nothing to stop it. The mind was there, but the body was not.

Cue the violin. And then finally, we stumble upon the HGH graph near the bottom.

HGH was not banned by Major League Baseball when I ordered it. It was controversial and unethical, but it was not banned. When the HGH arrived, it was unmarked — just some needles and vials. I was very nervous about injecting the substance because it was unmarked. The needles and boosters looked like they were for an elephant, and some of the vials contained fluids with different consistencies and colors. All of this was contrary to the information I had researched on the Internet, as I knew very little about performance-enhancing drugs or injecting them. However, I trusted that what I ordered was what I received, but these surprises raised a red flag.

What year did you order it? Upon whose advice did you order the HGH? What made you think HGH would help? Did you hear that from players/coaches/trainers? Had you seen teammates who may have been using?

Those are a few problems with any steroid admission. Coming clean is great, but it’s just going to spark another round of questioning. It might even cause some folks to scroll up and down the 2002 White Sox roster and, you know, wonder.

Former Sox pitcher Jim Parque confesses: Why I juiced (Sun-Times)