Asterisk-Rod

Never gets old

Alex Rodriguez has admitted to taking banned substances in an interview with ESPN following news reports over the weekend that he had tested positive during a confidential survey test undertaken by MLB in 2003. The revelation is a bombshell: Rodriguez is the highest-paid player in the game with an astronomical 10 year, $275 million deal; he plays for the New York Yankees, the most heavily scrutinized franchise in professional sport; and, most importantly, he is the active player most likely – perhaps nearly certain – to surpass Barry Bonds' tainted career home run record, currently standing at 762. For all of his flaws both on the field – his perceived inability to perform in the clutch – and off – uh, getting caught on film with strippers who aren't his wife, evidently alienating the rest of his clubhouse, his general "I live in a bubble" mentality – he stood as something of a rejoinder to the Steroids Era. A-Rod's superhuman performance (though not super-superhuman, a la Bonds, McGwire, or Sosa) was attributed to a natural giftedness and an unparalleled work ethic. He stood for the proposition that the genuine article was possible, that Ruthian heights could still be scaled without the illicit shortcut afforded by PEDs. Well, as with Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Roger Clemens (another one with a vaunted work ethic), Rafael Palmeiro, Miguel Tejada, et cetera, et cetera, A-Rod is now tainted, removing the last shred of doubt that much of the last two decade – probably the whole post-strike era – was a massive fraud perpetrated against baseball fans.

Frankly, I don't know whether or not A-Rod's scarlet 'S' will ruin his legacy the way it did Bonds'. A-Rod has already admitted to taking PEDs, thereby skipping the Giambi "weasely vague non-apology" apology and heading right for the Andy Pettitte "yeah, I did it but only because of x." Whether A-Rod's x, coping with the pressures of earning an insane $25 million a year to hit a ball with a stick, will equate to Pettitte's x, recovering from injury at a relatively advanced age, remains to be seen. My guess is that it's not even super relevant, at least to Yankee fans. As long as A-Rod didn't lie to federal investigators, and there's no suggestion that he's even spoken to them about PEDs, then he's in no real jeopardy of being sanctioned under the law or by MLB. (Of course, Congress could haul him in for a dog and pony show, but that's beyond anybody's control at this point.) This circus will go on for as long as the media wills it, which, given their love of A-Rod as a punching bag at home (and the already-simmering distaste/hatred for A-Rod and the Yanks on the road), will last at least through the rest of this season.

However, A-Rod is signed up to be a Yankee for the next nine seasons; furthermore, it's not likely that he'll approach the vaunted 763 HR milestone for at least another six or seven years – sitting at 553 homers right now, he would need at least five season even if he produced at a highly-unlikely 50 homer pace. The intensity surrounding this story isn't apt to last that long; by admitting to taking PEDs immediately, A-Rod has probably pursued the best course of action available in terms of putting this story behind him. Now speculation will likely be focused on a) how the other Yankees (most pivotally, Jeter) will react to the revelation, b) how Yankee fans will react to A-Rod, c) how fans on the road will react to A-Rod (Red Sox fans: I am looking forward to some clever signs), and d) who are the 103 other players who tested positive? Three of those four questions will answer themselves sooner rather than later, and the fourth concerns A-Rod only tangentially.

[Of course, there is one caveat to all of this, and that is the caveat A-Rod himself inserted into his admission: he claims to never have taken steroids as a Yankee. I expect, in part, that this bit of probable wishful thinking will catch on with gullible/willfully-blind Yankee fans who want to pretend that his achievements with their team are completely untainted. Of course there is always the possibility that new evidence will surface that A-Rod did in fact juice in pinstripes (oh what I wouldn't give for a photo of Jeter injecting A-Rod in the ass to surface), thereby ripping off what is already sure to be a very tenuous scab. If he gets caught lying now, it will be about 10 times as bad, if that is even possible.]

My gut feeling is that A-Rod's public act of contrition, coupled with a couple of clean piss tests and the passage of time, will put a damper on the public's appetite for opprobrium. After all, I think a large part of why America hated Bonds and Clemens so intensely was a) that both men behaved supremely villainously – in the WWE sense – both on and off the field and b) they refused to admit what was obvious to the rest of us. (To Bonds' "credit", he told a "take-it-or-leave-it" lie; either you believed him or you didn't. Whereas Clemens, apparently advised by his lawyer, engaged in an incredibly bizarre act of P.R. self-immolation, essentially staging an inconclusive show trial of his accuser and inadvertently hanging himself in the process.) A-Rod can ride this thing out now that the cat's out of the bag; it's difficult to imagine people really working themselves into a lather year after year, apart from the smattering of boos likely to greet him on the road with every first at-bat.

The real losers in all of this are the Yankees. The opening of their brand new Xanadu-esque ballpark, already tainted by tales of excessive abuse of the public till, will now be overshadowed by the year of A-Roid (credit to my Yankee fan friend Vinnie on that one). Their planned promotional push surrounding Rodriguez's drive to 763 homers will invariably have to be scaled back, costing the team potentially hundreds of millions in revenue. Vis-a-vis the actual team, we know from Joe Torre's book that A-Rod already doesn't have the best of relationships with his teammates; this certainly won't help matters. (Though it is delightful to imagine Mark Teixiera and C.C. Sabathia getting YES Network mics shoved into their faces and being asked about Rodriguez night in and night out – welcome to the Bronx!) Of course, as a Mets fan, the best thing that can happen apart from a Mets World Series win (sign Manny) is watching the Yankees devolved into some vintage Steinbrenner-esque chaos, so this is like a gift from the baseball gods.