Feb 12th, 2009 – A-Fraud
The angst, the outrage, the fan uprising, the media frenzy.
What about you? Shocked? Feeling letdown? Is baseball over for you?
Well, get over yourself. Everyone should have known years ago had we only been paying attention.
All we had to do was listen to the only truly honest man in all of baseball to discover that the supposed savior of the home run record, Alex Rodriguez, didn’t just try steroids, he was a major league user.
And that man was and is, Jose Canseco.
Oh irony, thy name is baseball.
A-Rod is having a rather rough time of it these days isn’t he?
It was just as few weeks back that Joe Torre nailed him in his autobiography as basically, a loser. His former manager made it his mission to reinforce that A-Rod is the highest-paid player in the game on a team that hasn’t won a thing since he arrived. His explanation for A-Rod’s shortcomings is that he is so afraid of failure, he can’t “get out of his own way.”
Kinda prophetic now huh?
Prior to that it was his spectacularly messy divorce upon the revelation, (or revulsion, depending on your POV), that he and Madonna had been bumping six-packs.
Now we know – because he told us Monday on ESPN – that he is a product of what he described as the “loosey-goosey era” when there were “a lot of people doing a lot of things.”
So – it’s not really his fault as “everyone” was doing it. I’m sure the rest of his baseball brethren are totally thrilled with him now.
He also cleared up that pesky “he lied on 60 Minutes” thing where in 2007 he told Katie Couric that he never used steroids. He explained that he didn’t know he had failed a test until one of Sports Illustrated’s reporters called him just last week.
So – in his mind, a feller never really has taken steroids until he has tested positive. That logic is kinda true – if you are a megalomaniac that is. Using that same argument, when Bernard Madoff was taking people’s money in that $50-billion Ponzi scheme, he didn’t really become a thief and a creep until after he got caught.
Rodriguez believes that “New Yorkers like honesty, and they “love to forgive you.”
First off, he just admitted that until he got caught, he was a HUGE liar. And where exactly is this fantasy New York of which he speaks? Before they could barely tolerate him. Now? Hope that Yankee pinstripes come in Kevlar.
Finally, he hopes the Hall of Fame won’t be closed to him at the end of his career. A stats hawk as always, as that’s all he has to truly show for his years in the game, (except for that bazillion dollars of course) he said, “You have to look at the data. If you have a career of, you know, 25 years, and you take away three, or you take away 2½, or you take away one, I think overall you have to make a decision.”
Okay – let’s do that. Let’s erase the years 2001 to 2003.
A-Rod’s greatest hope for into getting into the Hall was to become the home run king, something he was on track for – until today.
In those three years A-Rod was with the Texas Rangers and he hit 52, 57 and 47 home runs respectively. Now, let’s subtract those 156 home runs from his current total of 553. That drops his dinger total to 397. Respectable, in a Joe Carter kinda way, but hardly Hall of Fame numbers now are they?
Hank Aaron’s home run record (and it’s patently clear as of today that it is still his record) stands at 755. That means A-Rod, who will be 34 at season’s end, is more than half way there.
Good luck with that A-Rod.
Cheers – Gavin McDougald – AKA Couch
