Accidental Blogger

I want to comment on Alex Rodriguez, who, you've surely heard by now, was part of the steroids-in-baseball conspiracy, which seeks to dishonor a game in which grown men are paid millions of dollars to wear ridiculous outfits and stand around while one guy throws a little white ball to another guy and a third guy in a differently colored ridiculous outfit swings a stick at the ball and, if really good, intercepts it about 30 percent of the time. 

I actually don't have anything against baseball.  I used to enjoy watching it until the Red Sox won the World Series, at which point it became difficult to continue caring.  I do, however, have a problem the refrain, repeated ad nauseam, that A-Rod "disrespected the game" by taking performance enhancing drugs in order to secure for himself approximately $500 million in contracts handed out by the Texas Rangers and New York Yankees.  People take performance enhancing drugs in law school, but no one seems to mind.  Caffeine.  Amphetamines, only somewhat less commonly.  Sleeping pills and alcohol are even performance enhancing in their own ways.  But it's a world crisis only when athlete-entertainers take drugs that make them stronger and effectively healthier, allowing them to hit more of the home runs that spectators are always happy to see.  Yeah.

Anyhow, there are two aspects of this "scandal" that I intended to comment on when I decided to write this post.  First, A-Rod's claim that he took steroids because he was "young and stupid and naive."  It was actually an intelligent move, since it probably made him tens of millions of dollars.  But anyway, according to his official story, he took steroids from 2001 to 2003, his years in Texas — when he was 26, 27, and 28 years old.  Again, to relate this to my own peer group, there are a lot of lawyers who are 26 years old.  Some of them even have significant decision-making responsibility.  I have a friend who's going to be a physician at age 26.  You don't get to play that card.  19 year olds are young and stupid; 26 (or 28) year olds are not.

Second, it's such an intriguing "confession."  Reporters found out that he had tested positive for a banned substance in 2003.  He could have said it was a one-time thing, but because he's so immensely unpopular, people wouldn't have been willing to accept that fiction (like they did with Andy Pettitte).  So he said that, because he had just signed a $252 million contract with Texas, he felt pressured to be at his best all the time and responded to that pressure by chemically enhancing himself.  He subsequently admitted that he injected himself with something (which he knew was "not Tic Tacs"; people are giving him grief over not naming which particular steroid it was, again, because he's unpopular) two times per month during those three years.  That's an unprecedented confession.  It's positively huge.  That's a lot of doping!  And three years, in response to pressure, is believable, right?  Except that, no, it's not, because it's unfathomable that a baseball player would NOT do anything when he's 25 and about to become a free agent and hoping to sign a contract for hundreds of millions of dollars, but WOULD take steroids after signing for a guaranteed $252 million.  I would bet my iPod that he was juicing while in Seattle.  Seriously, I'd bet it against a Diet Coke, and feel comfortable with that bet. 

He obviously said what his agent and his lawyer and his other people (whoever they may be) told him to say.  But why did they tell him to admit to only those three years?  He confessed to a lot, but won't even gain credibility points because of the way he did it.  So either he should have said that he also took steroids before those three years in Texas, or he should have just said "I took steroids; the report of a positive test is accurate. I apologize to my fans" and left it at that.  I just think this is fascinating.  Alex Rodriguez admitted much more misconduct than any other professional athlete ever has, and yet he's being attacked by columnists (who have praised those other athletes for their own forced, incomplete disclosures) for not being forthcoming enough.  He admitted to more than the reporters had evidence of in order to make his story believable, and as a result no one believes his story.  How does this happen?