If Ichiro, why not A-Rod? Seriously, if you’re Jeffrey Loria, owner of the Miami Marlins, why wouldn’t you at least entertain the possibility of bringing Alex Rodriguez home for a shot at 700 home runs and beyond.
I kid, I kid.
I think.
It says a great deal about Rodriguez’s lack of credibility and, in an odd way, his love of the game that there was no shortage of cynicism even before the first tear drop had dried during the announcement Sunday that Rodriguez would be retiring to earn as an adviser the $27 million remaining on his contract with the New York Yankees. Even the harshest critics among those who played with, coached or covered him admit that Rodriguez is the baseball version of a gym rat and the idea of him stopping cold turkey is tough to imagine. Essentially, this was seen as the Yankees treating A-Rod with an iron fist inside a velvet glove — an impression driven home when general manager Brian Cashman effectively invited him to play for someone else if he wanted, no questions asked.
But that won’t happen. Nor should it. Because — and there really is no other way to say this — what A-Rod did to the game of baseball is worse than Barry Bonds’s transgressions.
Getting all moral high ground about steroid use isn’t a favourite topic of mine, because using medicine to cheat the wear and tear of time is something we do on a daily basis. Human growth hormone became in vogue because of anti-aging clinics, not home runs. And needing "a little helper" to get through our jobs or our studies or, simply, chill, has been a fact of life even before The Rolling Stones were singing about it. To demand that athletes, who perform in rigorous conditions on a daily basis, do things cleaner than everybody else in society is silly … especially when we hitch the money they make to production.
But that’s a lost battle. Given the manner in which Olympic athletes have called out the government-sponsored drug cheats of Russia — as well as the IOC’s complicity, less because it took advantage of cover provided by an international sports tribunal and more because of foot-dragging due to its fear of Vladimir Putin — it’s pretty clear the moralists have won, at least at the amateur level.
Uncle.
But all that said, I have not even the slightest bit of sympathy for A-Rod, who kept taking performance-enhancing drugs and soliciting them knowing full well that the game’s authorities had their eyes on him. Two years after Bonds retired — two years — A-Rod was still doing business with some of the big-name players in the doping game. Three years later? He was at it again. No sport is ever going to be completely clean; if amateur athletes can cheat, you damned well know guys making $30 million a year can figure out a way around even the most stringent testing program. But know this about A-Rod: evidence suggests he cheated even as his peers started to pressure their own players’ association to support stronger testing. I mean, I love a cynic as much as anybody else, but come on! The guess here is he was going with the flow much less than Bonds.
Bonds is now back in the game as a hitting coach with the Marlins. (The Marlins … of course it would be the Marlins.) Mark McGwire, another member of the game’s Mount Crushmore, is on his second team as a hitting coach — and you know you’re back in the game’s good graces when you can be fired and hired by another team just like any other coach. Neither will be voted into the Hall of Fame, is my guess. They’ll be at the mercy of a veteran’s committee, as will A-Rod, who announced his retirement on the same day as Ichiro recorded his 3,000th major league hit, in a Marlins jersey.
Loria, of course, is a collector, a former Yankees season-ticket holder who likes all things Yankees. And since A-Rod — who with 696 homers is fourth on the all-time list behind Bonds (762), Hank Aaron (755) and Babe Ruth (714) — is from Miami, you might think the P.T. Barnum part of Loria would get a kick out of seeing if A-Rod could help attendance. But this is different than Ichiro: for one thing, Ichiro’s temperament and skills are suited for a part-time role in the National League. For another, 3,000 hits is something worth striving for, because it is a largely unsullied milestone, despite Pete Rose’s pariah status as the all-time major league hits leader.
A-Rod isn’t getting to 755, not clean at least. Beyond that, as much as Rob Manfred seems an enlightened commissioner, forget not that A-Rod made his legal challenge against baseball personal, and there is still some power in the bully pulpit of the commissioner’s office.
I don’t know if anybody will ever challenge Bonds’s career total, given the way the game has gone and given the way drug testing has at least closed some of the avenues available to players. Mike Trout? Maybe. Miguel Cabrera and/or Albert Pujols? They’d need one hell of a finishing kick, not to mention hubris way beyond that of A-Rod, who not only should have known better but did know better. Better than anybody else before him.