Some place, Derek Jeter sat back and laughed. Some place and somehow news must have reached Jeter on Wednesday that public protestations to the contrary, Alex Rodriguez had in fact fessed up in January to using steroids between late 2010 and October 2012 in return for immunity from the Drug Enforcement Agency.
And so the first New York Yankees season A.D. (after Derek) will now begin with an even larger media circus when the team reports for spring training in Tampa. Mark Teixeira or Brian McCann had better claim lockers with lots of breathing space because Jeter won’t be around to handle the obligatory ‘wither the Yankees’ questions.
Until the explosive details of Rodriguez’s admission were reported by the Miami Herald on Wednesday, skepticism over his claim that he had never used banned substances during his Yankees career (which began in 2004) but had used performance-enhancing substances while with the Texas Rangers from 2001-2003 was based mostly on whispers and a general lack of confidence in his character.
Rodriguez, now 39, will return to the Yankees this season after being suspended for the entirety of 2014 with three years and $61 million left on his contract, but at least part of his attention in the lead up to spring training will be devoted to being a star witness in the DEA’s case against Dr. Anthony Bosch, whose Biogenesis clinic was reputedly a clearing house for PEDs. He will have company: Toronto Blue Jays free agent Melky Cabrera along with Nelson Cruz, Ryan Braun, Francisco Cervelli, Yasmani Grandal, Cesar Puello, Jordany Valdespin and Manny Ramirez have also been granted immunity in the case.
The Yankees, of course, have spent the past season making it seem apparent that they’d like Rodriguez to go away for good, especially if there was a way to wipe his contract off the books. Privately, however, there was also an acknowledgement that a healthy Rodriguez – preferably a clean, healthy, Rodriguez – might actually be of some use to the team since the lineup is already in a state of flux. Rodriguez may be a dolt, but he’s also not the only grossly overpaid, underperforming position player in pinstripes. Who knows, as friend Ian O’Connor of ESPNNewYork.com points out, perhaps Rodriguez could even do one of those soul-cleansing TV mea culpas.
But perhaps the most interesting fallout won’t settle over the Bronx. Rather, you wonder how uncomfortable the folks will be at Major League Baseball’s head office on Park Ave., in midtown Manhattan. We are in a transitory phase from Bud Selig’s tenure as commissioner to that of Rob Manfred, and Manfred’s fingerprints are all over the Biogenesis case as well as Rodriguez’s suspension.
Manfred is going to be a different sort of commissioner than Selig – in a fascinating and all-encompassing article on Grantland.com written by Tim Elfrink and Gus Garcia-Roberts, Manfred is described as the ‘consigliere commissioner’ – and as the article points out, as baseball’s chief labour negotiator he was forced to become better versed in the science of PEDs than any other professional sports executive.
But Manfred’s approach has at times been heavy-handed, and there are those around the game who still blanche at the manner in which MLB – with Manfred, then baseball’s COO, apparently leading the charge – paid cash for Biogenesis documents that turned out to be stolen.
If nothing else, this is a reminder to the incoming commissioner that the legacy of the steroid era is not yet entirely written.
At least he can give thanks for one thing: Rodriguez’s suspension, the way offence has changed and the deterioration of his skills will make it difficult for him to make up the 108 home runs needed to surpass Barry Bonds’ career mark of 762. Rodriguez’s home run rate was already falling in the 2012 season and legendary sluggers such as Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Robinson and Babe Ruth saw their power fall precipitously in their 40s. Heck, the chemically-enhanced Bonds managed 23 homers just twice after turning 40.
If you think Bonds’ overtaking of Hank Aaron was gut-wrenching for the game of baseball – I covered it for a couple of weeks, putting the hip-waders on every day and climbing into the muck and mire of Barry’s World — just imagine the unhappy notion of the two most reviled players in modern baseball history being front and centre in discussion of what was once the most hallowed number in the game.