They’re zapping Angels’ growth into a contender

THE ANGELS can’t seem to catch a break.

General Manager Bill Stoneman has been searching for a power hitter for years, finally finds a guy in Gary Matthews Jr., who looks as if he might’ve been willing to do whatever it takes to become the team’s big bopper, and now law enforcement officials want to muck it up.

Baseball does not test for human growth hormone, theoretically making it possible for every player in the game to be juiced up. But then how are the Angels expected to compete if the authorities are now scaring our players into probably playing it safe?

We have reports that Matthews somehow got a prescription for human growth hormone in 2004 -- obviously a bad batch if he actually took the stuff, because he hit only .255 the next year.

I’d like to think the Angels picked up a player a lot smarter than that, who saved the HGH for the start of the 2006 season and the final year of his contract, knowing a really good year would win him a big free-agent payday.

Matthews, a career .249 hitter before hitting .313 in 2006, signed a $50-million deal with the Angels. Do you think the Angels would have given him that much money if they had known there was no way he could any longer get his hands on HGH?

I’ll tell you, if the guy goes on to hit closer to .249 than .313 this year, thereby ruining the Angels’ big off-season acquisition, it’s not fair.

To make it a level playing field -- knowing baseball will never approve blood tests for HGH -- let’s find out where everyone is getting their HGH. Why just pick on Matthews, and make it that much tougher for the Angels to play big this year?

OSCAR DE La Hoya had plans to give Floyd Mayweather Jr. a duffel bag stuffed with Pampers when they met Wednesday for a news conference in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to hype their May 5 bout in Las Vegas.

But then he heard Mayweather intended to give him a live chicken.

“You know I was kind of praying he’d get under my skin and give me the motivation to really beat him,” De La Hoya said. “And he did. This fight is not going 10 rounds.”

Mayweather named his chicken Golden Girl, placed a gold medal around its neck and then stared the chicken down. For the next 10 minutes or so, he just clucked and clucked. Mayweather, not the chicken.

The two fighters posed for pictures nose to nose with Mayweather trash talking De La Hoya the whole time. Just a few feet away, the Doors were being given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and if only they had cranked up, “Hello, I Love You,” it would’ve been just perfect.

IN THE last four years, they’ve tried to stop me with such heavyweights as Deacon Jones, Jennifer Tilly, Jerry Buss and the Unabomber. They’ve all failed.

For the fifth annual World Poker Tour Invitational on Saturday, officials are now throwing an amputee at me in the hopes of softening me up.

“I’ve never played poker before, got one leg, just a sad, sad story, and please, sir, be kind to me,” groaned Marlon Shirley, and right now I’d imagine Plaschke is jumping into his car and racing to the Commerce Casino to hear more.

I say, deal ‘em, peg leg.

“My mother was a prostitute and a drug addict and left me walking the streets of Las Vegas when I was three,” Shirley said. “I don’t know who my father was. I went to a group home where there was physical abuse. I was sent to an orphanage, fell off a riding lawnmower and it ran over my foot. I woke up in a hospital and jumped out of bed. I didn’t land very well, what with no foot. My adopted family beat me up. I was taken out of foster care and put back in an orphanage. Then I was adopted at age 9 by a family in Utah.”

I’ve got to admit, that got me. No one should have to live in Utah.

Then I did some homework and learned this guy is a ringer, the fastest amputee in the world, the only amputee to run 100 meters under 11 seconds. We’re talking big-time, serious athlete here.

He was the Paralympics’ gold-medal winner in Sydney and again in Athens. He’s also been seen on the side of McDonald’s cups, on posters in airports for the Foundation for a Better Life, and he recently began working with soldiers who have lost limbs serving overseas.

He’s now also taking poker as seriously as a 100-meter race.

“Some people have to worry about aces up someone’s sleeve,” he said. “You, you’ve got to worry about aces down someone’s leg.”

This year’s tournament has drawn Shirley and another long list of celebrities, some you might’ve actually heard of before.

Tennis player Andy Roddick, who wouldn’t have a chance of winning if Roger Federer had also been invited, will be competing with poker pros and selected media for $200,000 in cash and a seat in the championship event in Las Vegas.

A year ago, I had to lose on purpose, depriving the Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA of who knows how much money, so as to not miss an interview with Phil Jackson. Talk about getting dealt a bad hand.

This year I will attend the City of Los Angeles Marathon President’s Reception on my off day, which is being put on by the L.A. Sports & Entertainment Commission, so I can put together an early column and avoid any conflict that might distract me from winning the tournament on behalf of the hospital.

I know it’s a tremendous sacrifice, especially since I’m going to have to spend almost the whole night at the reception with Sharon Stone for my column -- when I ordinarily would be home with the wife.

I hope she understands, but then I’m pretty sure Sharon will.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.