Bits and Pieces of Truth

So here's what we're supposed to believe.

At a time when he was in the first few years of a ginormous 10-year, $252 million contract to play professional baseball, Alex Rodriguez was merrily popping and otherwise ingesting a little of this, a little of that to juice his talent, all along knowing it was illegal stuff but not really having any idea what he was putting in his body.

According to Rodriguez, it could have been anything. Sugar. Strychnine. Cod liver oil. Flaxseed. Human growth hormone. Vitamin C.  He had, and has, no idea what it was he was taking.

That's a little hard to believe.

Other parts of the carefully managed A-Rod/A-Fraud/A-Roid confession yesterday, on the other hand, were very believable.

That Texas Rangers team, it would appear, was Steroid Central for years, long before Rodriguez got there. That he says a "culture" was prevalent in the game and with that team that told players that taking performance-enhancing drugs was acceptable makes sense. That he felt pressure to do whatever he could to justify the biggest contract in baseball history makes sense as well, although it's a sad commentary on the insecurities of a superb athlete.

That baseball was turning a blind eye to an awful lot of shenanigans in those days as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa put the game back on the front page with their home run-hitting feats is a fact, and it's rather humorous now to hear so many baseball people say they had no idea what was going on in clubhouses back then. The union, for goodness sakes, was apparently tipping players off to "random" drug tests, so somebody knew something.

C'mon. Everybody saw the explosion of muscles everywhere. Heck, McGwire's bottle of androstiendione was there in his locker for the world to see. Instead of an investigation, however, what we got was an admonishment not to ruin the fun and anyways, how could steroids help a guy hit home runs anyway?

Remember that? People used to say it all the time. Happily now, in Feb., 2009, in the week of Darwin's birth when the evolution of man in sport should be better understood than ever before, you're not hearing such nonsense as much.

So there are parts of Rodriguez's story that sound logical, and parts in which his conveniently foggy memory make him sound like Roger Clemens alleging that Andy Pettitte "mis-remembered" things from the good old days.

That said, Rodriguez was smart to get out in front of this story. He learned that from Pettitte and Jason Giambi and clearly has seen that the way in which McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and Clemens have handled allegations against them is not the way to go. I would still argue that if McGwire had come clean about his drug use, the path to the Hall of Fame would now be clear.

The crucial difference for Rodriguez when compared to McGwire and Clemens, however, is that he's still playing. He has a chance, over the next 7-10 years, to make all this seem like a bad memory, to perform clean at such a level that he'll be viewed no worse than someone like, say, Santonio Holmes, who dealt drugs as a teenager and went on to catch the winning pass in the Super Bowl.

The list of athletes with checkered pasts is long indeed, and that's the opportunity at hand for Rodriguez, to make his drug use of the early part of this century part of his past, but not his lasting legacy.

The biggest obstacle to doing that is the fact that he's just not a well-liked athlete by the media, his teammates, other players and his coaches.

Being A-Jerk is likely to now catch up to him more than being A-Roid.

Comments

[bobby orr]

All these baseball players on all these different drugs, yet baseball is still the most boring sport on the planet. Like how can anybody take this "sport" seriously anymore? The Olympics was right to boot it out. Here in Canada the Jays hang on by a thread to their existance. Once Rogers puts them up for sale, it will be Montreal Expos part two. Meaning Canada will finally become free of this moribund sport full of cheats and liars. And we'll join the rest of the world wondering what Americans see in that game.

[KRABLEGSS]

A-Roid averaged 52 home runs in the 3 years he has admitted to steroid use. In his other 10 full seasons he averaged 39.2 (not counting his first 2 years where he only played 65 games)

The problem going forward is that there will always be doubt since you have to catch people (like a cheating spouse) before they admit their use. Remember, he categorically denied using on 60 minutes. So now he says he's clean. Why did he hit 35 HR's in 2006 and 2008 but hit 54 in 2007? Was he injured in '06 and '08 or did he just have a strong tail wind in '07? Any statistical anamoly will fuel suspicion and follow this guy for the rest of his career.

[chris]

Soon it will happen that a player elected to the baseball Hall of Fame will be exposed as having taken steroids and other performance enhancing drugs throughout his career. Then what? It's one thing to try and deny them entry while they're still playing or waiting to get in. But were just reaching the tipping point. And nobody knows who took what or when.

This all falls onto the lap of Bud Selig and the MLB owners and Donald Fehr and the players association who, hand in hand, knowing and willfully allowed this to happen in order to rebuild baseball from the strike of 1994 and make gobs and gobs of money for themselves. If they didn't seem fit to punish those who took them, why let the sanctimoneous few in the media, who also turned a blind eye to this in order to sell a few books, decide for them. This is one of the saddest, most pathetic chapters in sports history.

[Giller]

I don't understand baseball's stance on all of this. Or, lack of a stance it seems. Players who took banned substances should have their "accomplishments" over those years wiped out. Anything and everything Alex did in those years he admits he took steroids should be discounted. All those homeruns should be off the books.
This should not only apply to Alex, but to anyone caught using. Even the ones we still like.

[jobo]

mis-remembered is grammatically correct.

[Dave So]

I love how people will say that steroids don't improve your hand eye co-ordination and therefore don't help you make contact with the ball any better. What they fail to realize is that steroids allows you to train harder, and more frequently. And as logic dictates, the more you practice the better you will get at something. Add this to the increased power that steroids provides from training harder and more frequently and you've got improved hand eye co-ordination, plus more power which equates to a greater number of homeruns. Not at all trying to take anything away from these guys when/if they were ever clean, because obviously they had the talent to begin with, but anyone who says that steroids doesn't help you play better is blind to certain facts. Do they not see the pattern of how all these big homerun hitters seem to be guys that were either juicing or taking other banned substances? It cannot be coincidence.

[Lost In Alberta]

Chris has put my thoughts to words perfectly - well said! I'll just add that MLB and the Union and even some in the media are pretty quick to dismiss Jose Canseco's comments in recent years as just fabrications to sell his books (which I'm sure is somewhat true). But the guy is probably the only "insider" telling the whole truth and not bits of truth when they're caught.

[Bob Holden.]

Prior to 1947, MLB was a game played by 16 teams in 10 US cities, east of the Mississippi, north of the Mason-Dixon line, by primarily caucasian men for middle class salaries,(with the exception of a handful of "superstars").

Other major league sports were similar. The Olympics and other amateur sports were the province of amateurs, who played their games primarily for the passion.

There are people who will do anything for money. As fans and consumers we have the option to financially support these "sports" or not. We also have the option of recognizing the National Baseball Hall of Fame inclusions or not.

Hopefully many of us can enjoy the entertainment value of watching a "game" without attachment to the money or performance enhancement.

[Victor]

I thank God that my roll model growing up was my father.

[Mark]

It's good that A-rod came clean. But there were over a hundred other positive tests on the list that A-rod was on. I want to know who the others were. And I want to hear it from their own mouths.

[Ron Gillespie]

I love how Alex gets credit for "owning up" to it. The guy was caught red handed! He didn't own up to it. Think he woulda said a word had he not been on the list??? Last year he lied and said he never took steroids.
And man - he was 28ish. That's not young or naive. What a liar and a cheater.

[maxie]

And A-hole would have us believe those 3 years were the ONLY ones he was on the juice. And the fact that he was outed for those 3 years was merely a coincidence. That he never did it again. That went he went from Texas, where he admitted to being under a lot of pressure - to New York, New York - the epi-centre of baseball (and the world, no?) that he felt no such pressure to perform, to live up to a huge contract, to deliver the goods in the baseball mad culture that is New York.

Me? I'd rather have a beer with Canseco that a champagne flute with A-Rod. Says here he still gets an asterisk.

[Mark]

Hey bobby orr! Basketball is the most boring game on the planet! The Jay's are not hanging bye a thread.They will be part of this city's sports landscape as long as there is MLB.

[blair]

So is A-Rod one of the 9% of players now on ritalin?