Alex Rodriguez used a banned substance while playing with the Rangers.

I have a friend, we’ll call him Alex to keep his name anonymous. Alex found a new job with a new company in which he was going to be earning more money. Let’s call his company “Rangers.” So Alex is working at Rangers and there is a lot of pressure, he wants to outperform his peers and really solidify himself as one of the best ever in his industry. Alex meets a friend who tells him about a secret potion that will increase his efficiency and of course his salary and leave no doubt that he’s better then his fellow employees. Alex obliges to take the potion and it does just as promised, his efficiency increased and he was able to find a new job paying him more money. We’ll call his new company “Yankees.” Once Alex gets to Yankees he decides that he doesn’t need the extra boost or the extra money anymore, so he quits taking the potion.

Something just doesn’t seem quite right about this story, why would Alex stop taking the potion when he started with Yankees? If you didn’t pick up on the subtle sarcasm, we are talking about Alex Rodriguez and his coming out of the juice closet. A-Rod did not come out on his own for obvious reasons, once you are a known steroids user you might as well walk around with a “Kick Me, I’m a Cheater” sign on your back. Not only that, but A-Rod just signed a rather large contract with the New York Yankees that might not have been offered had the Yankees known about his use of steroids. Actually, that is a bad example, we know the Yankees will sign anyone for insane amounts of money. The Yankees have give pinstripes to Jason Giambi, a known steroids user.

Alex Rodriguez says he's clean since going to New York, but some are now skeptical.

The news about A-Rod testing positive for steroids in 2003 leaked to Sports Illustrated last weekend. In ‘03 there were 104 players who tested positive for steroids, A-Rod was one of them. Although the tests were conducted by Major League Baseball, there was no punishment if you tested positive for a banned substance. Several questions have been raised about these tests. First, who are the other 103 players who tested positive? Second, how could MLB commissioner Bud Selig NOT know about these test results? Selig has acted like a parent who is oblivious to what his kids are doing throughout every steroids scandal. Selig’s latest statement on A-Rod is that he “shamed the game.” Oh really Bud? Knowing that players were using banned substances and not having penalties laid out and enforced seems to be just as shameful to me. What Selig is doing is just as shameful as NBA commissioner David Stern sweeping his Tim Donaghy refereeing scandal under the rug and acting like he had no idea such shenanigans were taking place.  

Back to A-Rod, what reason do we have to believe that his steroid use was just during his days with the Texas Rangers? It’s fair to say that the majority of sports athletes are not satisfied with a little when they can have a lot. Why else would a player sign a bigger contract with a bad team? Obviously winning isn’t their number one priority, it’s making money. The question becomes, should we put an asterisk on every player in MLB history that was a known steroids user? Should we blot their names out with white-out and deny them entrance to the Baseball Hall of Fame? It’s pretty fair to say that Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez will never be voted into the Hall of Fame, but why? These players simply played by the rules set out in front of them. If there was no punishment for taking a banned substance, then why wouldn’t a sleuth of players use them? MLB got themselves into this huge, gaping hole themselves and the first step to digging themselves out of it is to start being honest with themselves and the fans. Oh, and for those of you wondering what happened to my friend Alex, he had an affair with a blonde singer that had a huge gap between her friend teeth, divorced his wife, and never won best company in the industry since starting at Yankees…should have kept taking that potion I guess.

Tags: MLB

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under MLB. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.