Maybe Alex Rodriguez thinks he won something Monday because he got to play a game for the Yankees in Chicago. Maybe he thinks he somehow won here because even if he loses his appeal on the historic suspension handed down by Major League Baseball, he gets to keep at least $60 million. But Rodriguez, who can act like an amazing dim bulb, knows better.
He knows he lost big on this day, even if he was the center of all the attention he has always craved, the photographers still tracking every move and the reporters still hanging on every word. For now.
He has been shamed here, and knows it, whether he can still hit a little or not. Sports fans deserve better than this guy the way voters deserve better than horny, dishonest politicians.
Rodriguez has been shamed no matter how rich he is, and even if he stays rich for the rest of his life. People remember what they want to remember about their sports stars, and Rodriguez has to know that he has a great chance to be remembered as the same kind of drug cheat that Lance Armstrong is, and Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens, and all the other stars who thought the rules of their sport did not apply to them.
There will always be athletes looking for an edge and pushers like Anthony Bosch waiting to help them. Maybe you think sports like baseball and cycling are fighting a losing game here. Tell that to the dozen players who got banged on Monday because of Anthony Bosch’s Biogenesis clinic. Tell Lance Armstrong.
You want to keep prosecuting baseball for not doing enough in the past, have at it. But no sport ever made a bigger and more important statement than Major League Baseball did with Rodriguez, who appealed his suspension, and the other 12 guys — and their union — who accepted the sanctions handed down to them Monday by Commissioner Bud Selig.
And listen to Travis Tygart, the tough, honest guy who runs the United States Anti-Doping Association and who took down Lance Armstrong, even though Armstrong — another bum and liar with performance-enhancing drugs — had been racing away from the law of his sport for years the way he had been racing away from the other riders in the Tour de France.
No wonder the same people who believed the lie with Armstrong now want to believe that Rodriguez is the victim of something other than his own arrogance and insecurities.
“This is really an important moment for the fight for clean sports,” Tygart said. “Commissioner Selig and his team should be commended. It’s refreshing to see the head of a pro sport take a strong stand to protect the integrity of the game and the rights of clean athletes. It validates the decision of millions of athletes around the world to not take performance-enhancing drugs and instead compete cleanly.”
Another guy from cycling I know said this: “Why haven’t (A-Rod’s) people learned the Lance lesson? Does he want to go down as the guy who lied and denied? He should apologize, acknowledge what he did and move on. Don’t compound a selfish decision with another selfish decision.”
More than once in Chicago Monday night, Rodriguez was given the opportunity to deny he used performance-enhancing drugs supplied by Bosch. He did not give a straight answer to that question.
There was even the point where he was talking about Major League Baseball’s investigation of him and the sanctions against him Monday and somehow Rodriguez gave this answer:
“I don’t know what the motivation is for any of this.”
Yes, he does. He knows exactly what the motivation is, knows that baseball is doing its best to rid the sport of a player who chose not to follow the laws of the game and the drug agreement between the players and the owners; doing its best to prosecute those who try to hinder its probe of drug cheats and drug pushers, which it sure charges that Rodriguez did with its Biogenesis investigation.
Instead, Rodriguez wants to talk about the support he has gotten from fans, when he has to know that most Yankee fans want to shoot him into outer space, and think about a day when the Yankees can use the money they have wasted on him on players who might be able to win more than the one World Series that A-Rod has won in the nearly 10 years he has worn a Yankee uniform.
Rodriguez always seems desperate to make powerful statements, as he goes through life saying things he thinks people want to hear, something he will do until he limps away from baseball for good. Baseball is the one that made a powerful statement Monday, because no sport has had a day like this since Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned Shoeless Joe Jackson and other members of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox for life; for being a different kind of baseball cheat.
Lance Armstrong, one of the great bums in the history of sports, still has his money and fame. So does Alex Rodriguez. They still come up phonies and losers in front of the world. You know who wins? People who love sports, and still think it is not some cynical joke for sports to be on the level. You wonder if the next generation of cheats are paying attention, at last.
