The Side Line

Say it ain’t so, A-Rod. I mean, I can’t say I’m shocked, but I’m certainly surprised about the recent events involving Alex Rodriguez and steroids.

After Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa took so much heat for their involvement with performance-enhancing substances, A-Rod appeared to be the man to mount a charge on Bonds’ home run record as a clean contestant. Just glancing at the all-time home run list, and the active players on that list, A-Rod is the only player with more than 500 home runs with any legitimate shot of hitting No. 763 to pass Bonds. In other words, it’s going to be a while, if ever, until America gets a steroid-free challenger to the home run record, the most coveted in baseball. Right now I’m throwing my support behind Ryan Howard, Philadelphia’s left-handed slugger who is as personable as he is powerful. If he tests positive for anything, I’m giving up on baseball. Period.

I want to say A-Rod has done the right thing, by admitting his mistakes instead of ducking the authorities like his fellow players. However, now that he has admitted using banned substances until 2003, how am I supposed to believe that he stopped at that point and has been clean for almost six years, during which time he became the most feared hitter in baseball and won two MVP awards? A-Rod has said that he felt “so much pressure” in Texas with his huge contract and basically being tagged the best player in baseball. So when he got traded to the Yankees, that’s suddenly LESS pressure? It doesn’t add up.

I can’t forgive him for this, certainly not now and maybe not ever. And I suspect the vast majority of my sports fanatic associates feel the same way. Show me A-Rod’s clean test results for every year since 2003, and I will then, and only then, say that he is vindicated in my mind. At that point, I will resume cheering for him to smash Bonds’ record. But I highly doubt that will be the way things turn out. It looks like “A-Roid” is here to stay and baseball may never recover.