By admitting to using performance-enhancing drugs, Alex Rodriguez has all but ruined his Hall of Fame chances.
Shatter the thought, but I guess (gulp!) we should have listened to Jose Canseco after all.
With his admission of guilt, as a result of some digging by Sports Illustrated’s Selena Roberts, Alex Rodriguez, arguably the greatest player of this or any generation, is a juicer and will likely now have to buy a ticket like the rest of us for admission into Cooperstown.
In 2003, while the game was trying to get a handle on what we are now finding to be an epidemic of steroid use, the one player that everyone believed to be clean was actually sticking his hand in the syringe jar.
In the third year of a landscape altering 10-year, $252-million deal, the man everyone will now jokingly refer to as A-Roid, was feeling the weight of that massive contract.
His teammates in Texas during those years read like a Who’s Who of baseball’s emerging steroid culture. Ken Caminiti (’01), played 54 games with the Rangers that season – his final in the Majors – and then died as a result of his steroid and other chemical abuses just three years later. Rafael Palmeiro (’01-‘03) hit behind Rodriguez for the most part and averaged 43 HR and 113 RBI in three years while A-Rod’s teammate. Palmeiro faded from baseball’s spotlight after 2005, a year in which he stated for the record in front of a Congressional hearing that he "never used steroids...period."
Six months later Palmeiero was suspended for testing positive for steroids. Another teammate during Rodriguez’s seasons in Texas was Randy Velarde, whose name came out in the Mitchell Report.
Why a player of such immense talent would resort to cheating through chemicals is for others to debate. I guess, in hindsight, he had 25 million reasons (his average salary at the time) and I lack the morality to say I wouldn’t have done the same.
Love him or hate him – and the majority of you fall in line with the latter – I had always believed, based on his enormous skills, that there was no way that A-Rod would get caught up in the performance-enhancing drug game.
My first year as third man in the Blue Jays broadcast booth was 1993 and in September of the following year, Rodriguez arrived in Seattle as a lanky, 18-year-old that many were comparing with Cal Ripken Jr. thanks to his uniquely large frame for a shortstop.
I watched as the boy grew into the man and, early on, it was very clear that he was a special player. With the power of Babe Ruth, the speed of Lou Brock, and the glove of Ripken, Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez was – in my humble estimation – the greatest all-around player I had ever seen. I can still say the same today despite his admission.
It just now comes with an *.
But as we all found out in the last few days and finally confirmed by the man himself, it was all a sham.
Now, it’s up to the holier than thou media to get up on their high horses and "tisk, tisk, tisk" until they are blue in the face. As someone eloquently stated, Rodriguez will now replace Palmeiro on the Mount Rushmore of alleged juicers alongside Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
A quick glance through the sports pages of several newspaper Web sites reveals a variety of emotions on this red-hot subject, especially in New York where the Yankees became a preferred destination for many steroid and human growth hormone abusers (see Clemens, Canseco, Andy Pettitte, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, David Justice, Chuck Knoblauch, Kevin Brown, Mike Stanton, Velarde and Jason Grimsley – all of whom were named in the Mitchell Report). The strongest voice to date has been that of Bill Madden of the New York Daily News who wrote that it’s time for the Yankees to cut A-Rod loose, no matter the cost.
Strong words indeed but not an unreasonable request.
With Rodriguez coming clean, it’s now time for the media to start asking the tough questions to the people that run this great game: baseball commissioner Bud Selig, MLBPA union chief Don Fehr and the union’s chief operating officer Gene Orza. Especially tough questions should be directed at Orza who, we are led to believe, was giving certain players warnings about when random drug tests were heading their way. Anyone that doesn’t find this inherently wrong probably also thinks that professional wrestling is real and that Charles Manson was just a misunderstood hippie.
And the fact that Selig and Fehr knew of a positive test by A-Rod and chose to stifle that information probably won’t sit too well with the politicians in Washington who have been trying to get to the bottom of this whole steroid mess at a time when they have bigger fish to fry.
In the end, this will be all about spin and super agent Scott Boras will do everything within his power to protect his client and the millions of dollars in commissions he represents to him.
A-Rod will now retreat and then re-emerge for spring training and the World Baseball Classic where he’ll play for the Dominican Republic. But with the verdict handed down long ago in the court of public opinion it says here that no matter what Alex Rodriguez tries to sell us, it won’t amount to a hill of beans.
By the way, circle April 24th on your sporting calendars. That’s when A-Roid goes to Fenway for a severe heckling.
Rodriguez cheated and was allowed to cheat by the guardians of the game while being compensated with more money than any of us could ever hope to spend in our lifetime.
That fact alone, at a time when many people are struggling just to make ends meet, is just wrong.
