Yankees slugger drama continues with steroid admission
It’s amazing how one guy can always find himself in these situations.
Many of them are self-inflicted for a man that obviously cant seem to help himself.
First it was the stuff in Joe Torre and Tom Verducci’s book The Yankee Years, that was initially going to cause a media firestorm when Spring Training opens up for the Yankees.
Doesn’t he wish he could have that firestorm instead of THIS?
When I woke up on Saturday morning on turned on the laptop and the TV, to say that my eyes didn’t perk up when I saw the headline of “A-Rod tested positive for steroids” was an understatement. I said to myself, “Oh crap, not him too.”
The report stated that he failed a steroids test back in 2003 while he was with the Texas Rangers and before he was traded to the New York Yankees. Sports Illustrated had the story and cited four anonymous independent sources. I flipped over to the new MLB Network and they had full coverage on the latest new drama with a guy who seems to be a walking billboard, always craving attention.
I instantly thought about the 60 Minutes interview that he did just a few after the Mitchell Report when CBS News Katie Couric asked him the following questions:
Couric: Have you ever used steroids or any other performance enhancing drugs?
Rodriguez: “No”.
Couric: “Have you ever been tempted to take any of those drugs?”
Rodriguez: “No”.
He would go on to pontificate further as to why did not need to do the drugs. As we were now finding out, it was all a complete farce.
It was only a matter of time before he was going to have to say something. Was he going to go the McGwire (“I don’t want to talk about the past.”), Palmeiro (sticking his finger to Congress), Sosa (“no habla Ingles”), Bonds (“I thought it was flaxseed oil”) and Clemens (outright denial) route? Or if he would admit to his faults and try to figure a way past this new saga that he has dragged the Yankees into.
If you have been keeping score in the past, quality decision making and clutch play has never been a trademark of Rodriguez in the first place and you wondered if he would start now. On Monday, he admitted to ESPN that he did in fact use the drugs (though he didn’t know what they were or how he got them) from 2001 until 2003 before having an epiphany on day while suffering from a neck injury.
He claims he needed to do it to justify his new $252 million contract he had just signed with the Rangers. In addition, he blamed his usage on the “culture” that existed in the clubhouse in which players felt the need to “keep up”. The Texas team during that time in retrospect read off like nothing more than a team of druggies with the clubhouse being used as a chemical lab with needles, syringes and pills available if you asked around.
His production spiked during those three years by coincidence. Did he juice up before so could earn that enormous contract? No one knows for sure.
Has he been “on the stuff” since joining the Yankees? No one knows for sure.
However A-Rod wants everyone to believe that he was clean before and after his time in Texas. Problem is, he has already been proven a liar and now was trying to convince the public this time that what he was saying is “the real story”.
It is like the old saying, “I lied on Monday, but today I’m telling the truth.”
But what is “The Real Story”? He was never asked. What makes it even worse to begin with was Rodriguez, along with the other 103 players who failed the test knew the test was coming and STILL failed it. The Players Union were hoping to have less than five percent of the players test positive so there would not be any testing at all in baseball.
When the results showed more than that, the tests could have been destroyed by the Union but were not because the leadership felt that they could detect enough false-positive results to lower the percentages of failed results that were later seized by the Federal Government as part of the BALCO investigation.
He would not have apologized if he were not caught. So how sincere is he really? It would seem as if the performance enhancers only seemed to work six months out of the year and expired whenever the clock turned to October.
It’s amazing how one guy can always find himself in these situations.
Many of them are self-inflicted for a man that obviously cant seem to help himself.
First it was the stuff in Joe Torre and Tom Verducci’s book The Yankee Years, that was initially going to cause a media firestorm when Spring Training opens up for the Yankees.
Doesn’t he wish he could have that firestorm instead of THIS?
When I woke up on Saturday morning on turned on the laptop and the TV, to say that my eyes didn’t perk up when I saw the headline of “A-Rod tested positive for steroids” was an understatement. I said to myself, “Oh crap, not him too.”
The report stated that he failed a steroids test back in 2003 while he was with the Texas Rangers and before he was traded to the New York Yankees. Sports Illustrated had the story and cited four anonymous independent sources. I flipped over to the new MLB Network and they had full coverage on the latest new drama with a guy who seems to be a walking billboard, always craving attention.
I instantly thought about the 60 Minutes interview that he did just a few after the Mitchell Report when CBS News Katie Couric asked him the following questions:
Couric: Have you ever used steroids or any other performance enhancing drugs?
Rodriguez: “No”.
Couric: “Have you ever been tempted to take any of those drugs?”
Rodriguez: “No”.
He would go on to pontificate further as to why did not need to do the drugs. As we were now finding out, it was all a complete farce.
It was only a matter of time before he was going to have to say something. Was he going to go the McGwire (“I don’t want to talk about the past.”), Palmeiro (sticking his finger to Congress), Sosa (“no habla Ingles”), Bonds (“I thought it was flaxseed oil”) and Clemens (outright denial) route? Or if he would admit to his faults and try to figure a way past this new saga that he has dragged the Yankees into.
If you have been keeping score in the past, quality decision making and clutch play has never been a trademark of Rodriguez in the first place and you wondered if he would start now. On Monday, he admitted to ESPN that he did in fact use the drugs (though he didn’t know what they were or how he got them) from 2001 until 2003 before having an epiphany on day while suffering from a neck injury.
He claims he needed to do it to justify his new $252 million contract he had just signed with the Rangers. In addition, he blamed his usage on the “culture” that existed in the clubhouse in which players felt the need to “keep up”. The Texas team during that time in retrospect read off like nothing more than a team of druggies with the clubhouse being used as a chemical lab with needles, syringes and pills available if you asked around.
His production spiked during those three years by coincidence. Did he juice up before so could earn that enormous contract? No one knows for sure.
Has he been “on the stuff” since joining the Yankees? No one knows for sure.
However A-Rod wants everyone to believe that he was clean before and after his time in Texas. Problem is, he has already been proven a liar and now was trying to convince the public this time that what he was saying is “the real story”.
It is like the old saying, “I lied on Monday, but today I’m telling the truth.”
But what is “The Real Story”? He was never asked. What makes it even worse to begin with was Rodriguez, along with the other 103 players who failed the test knew the test was coming and STILL failed it. The Players Union were hoping to have less than five percent of the players test positive so there would not be any testing at all in baseball.
When the results showed more than that, the tests could have been destroyed by the Union but were not because the leadership felt that they could detect enough false-positive results to lower the percentages of failed results that were later seized by the Federal Government as part of the BALCO investigation.
He would not have apologized if he were not caught. So how sincere is he really? It would seem as if the performance enhancers only seemed to work six months out of the year and expired whenever the clock turned to October.
Its always something with him.
Five years of this drama and there are nine more to go.
Whether it is his struggles in the clutch, his postseason failures, the problems with his ex-wife, Madonna, the A-Fraud stuff in the Torre/Verducci book.
Now this.
I wish I could say that he conned the Yankees out of an additional $6 million for each homerun record he surpasses. He was originally supposed to leave after he opted out of his contract before the end of the 2007 World Series. The problem is that the team has not had a brilliant record themselves on the moral grounds of performance enhancing drugs and their players. They signed Jason Giambi knowing he was a rumored juicer. Numerous members of the 2000 championship team were drugged up, including Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte.
There is no sympathy to given to the Yankees here. It’s a bed they have to lie in. They invited this mess.
The question now going forward is how the team proceeds with this “character” on its roster, which is already weak-minded and at other times a mental head case that has had problems in “clutch” situations.
How is it going to be when he goes on the road? The games at Fenway Park or Shea Stadium are always not so inviting and that is only expected to ratchet up even more. At new Yankee Stadium, it may be even worse if he is struggling or cannot get the big hit. Will he have the mental capacity to put this all behind him and not succumb to the overly increasing scrutiny that will follow him this season?
Thanks to Rodriguez, the Yankees season has been given a two-month head start.
It is just another in the unfortunate episode of “As the A-Rod (or A-Roid) Turns.
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