A-Mess

Santa Claus is a cheater. The Easter Bunny is a liar. And the Tooth Fairy cannot be trusted.

Sorry, folks, that’s just the world we live in nowadays.

All this time I considered Alex Rodriguez to be the anti-Barry B*nds. A-Rod did not need performance enhancement drugs. He even said so. I took him for his word over Jose Canseco’s. Guess that makes me the fool and Canseco the god-awful truth. Jeesh!

Truth is, I wanted to believe Alex.

Unlike B*nds, McGwire, and Canseco, Rodriguez did not swell to grotesque proportions. His numbers did not suddenly become Ruthian. In fact, a look at his power numbers before 2001 and after 2003, the three years he admitted taking PED’s, reveals nothing statistically unusual.

As a drug-free 22-year-old, he hit 42 homers with 124 RBIs. As a 27-year-old juicer, he had a similar 47/118. In 2007 (presumably juice-free although since he openly lied before, we really don’t know) he clubbed 54 ding dongs, second highest in his career not far behind 57 in 2002.

How much did the drugs help him? On the surface, I’d say, not much. So what? That’s not the point. He is now tainted more than China milk products. Doesn’t matter if he goes way past 800. When he passes B*nds on the all-time home run list, people will remember the ‘roids, recall Hank Aaron and not celebrate what should be considered the biggest career accomplishment in baseball history. Oh yeah, that’s why the Yankees spent the big bucks—to have him in pinstripes for that moment which now goes from being hallowed to hollow.

Will Rodriguez go from being one of the greatest players of all-time to someone who can’t even make the Hall of Fame? Look at the sorry HOF vote total for McGwire. B*nds is a better analogy because he was arguably great before he got the cream but I do not believe he would get the necessary 75 percent approval if the vote was taken today.

Will we feel the same way, say, nine years from now? We are a forgiving nation, that’s for sure, but the whole era is so tainted as to be rendered statistically meaningless.

And that is sad for true baseball fans who eat stats for breakfast.

He pleads that he was in a “loosey-goosey” culture. True, the 2001 Rangers had certified juicers Canseco, Raphael Palmeiro, Ken Caminiti, Ruben Sierra, et al. and it was not technically against the rules, thanks to their union. While the rest of world sport adopted prohibitions and testing, union bigwig Donald Fehr outmaneuvered $17.5 million dollar man Bud Selig to allow illegal drug use that created an unlevel playing field.

How rampant was the problem? According to reports, 104 tested positive in 2003 out of almost 1,200 tested, or roughly 8 percent. In my opinion, that is significant but not gross as 92 percent of anything is high. But some drugs go undetected and there is no reliable test for human growth hormone, so that number is a minimum.

There’s no reason to get into the appropriateness of releasing test results. When A-Roid took the test in 2003, he never expected the results would be made available to the public after signing an agreement for confidentiality and anonymity. None of that matters anymore.

It’s like whoever took that photo of Michael Phelps sucking on a bong at a party. Phelps never thought that one of his fellow stoners would betray him like that and put him at the center of media spotlight. We don’t know who it was.

But we know who threw Rodriguez under the team bus. It was Fehr and Selig for not destroying the results as soon as they got what they wanted which was a number. They didn’t care about names. But we do.

What a mess.

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