Hey, A-Rod, go ahead and sit this one out
Rodriguez has no room to lecture Astros on accountability
This is what Alex Rodriguez said the other day about the Astros, wanting to sound tough while also providing cover for himself when he’s talking about sign-stealing and all the rest of it for ESPN and Fox this season:
“You cheat, you win a championship, there is no suspension, and then there’s no remorse. The last one is probably the worst one. From a guy who has made as many mistakes as anybody on the biggest stage — I served the longest suspension in MLB history, it cost me well over $35 million, and you know what? I deserved that. I came back. I owned it after acting like a buffoon for a long time. I had my apologies, and then I went dark. I wanted my next move to be contrite and change my narrative. You have to be accountable … I felt the hatred from the people and I earned it.”
But this is what Rodriguez said at a spring training press conference in 2009, after it came out that he had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs when he was with the Texas Rangers, the day he was asked if he was aware that the “boli” he was using was a steroid:
“I didn’t think they were steroids. That’s again the part of being young and stupid. It was over the counter, it was pretty basic. And you know, it was really amateur hour. I mean, it was two guys, we couldn’t go outside, we couldn’t ask anyone, we didn’t want to ask anyone. We went outside team doctors, team trainers. It was two guys doing a very amateur and very immature thing. We probably didn’t even take it right; like I said in my statement, we used to do it about two times a month. I don’t even know if that’s proper. So when this gentleman asked about how it affected us, I’m not sure if we even did it right to affect us in the right way. So all these years, I never thought I did anything that was wrong.”
Oh.
Of course we’re supposed to believe now that Rodriguez was clean as Purelle when he helped hit the Yankees back to the Canyon of Heroes in 2009, and didn’t go running to Bosch – he once told ESPN: The Magazine that he thought Bosch was simply giving him placebo, long after he’d presumably stopped being young and stupid – until years later.
All this time later, only Rodriguez knows exactly what he was taking and when he took it, back when he was the one cheating himself and the game. But now he clearly plans to tell the Astros, and us, all about it. He speaks frequently about the season he lost out of his career and the millions and millions of dollars it cost him. Clearly, he believes he’s in the clear now, in what seems to be his unofficial role as the mayor of Major League Baseball.
So he talks about the lack of remorse, and is right about that. But Alex himself was truly remorseful twice in his career, both times when caught. Still acts as if what he was taking were steroids-ish. And is apparently sticking to his story that in all the years before he became the captain of the Biogenesis All-Stars, he only used baseball drugs for three years in Texas. So when he was hitting 50 home runs in Arlington, he was taking something or other because he was young and stupid. When he went for 54 home runs and 156 RBI with the Yankees in 2007, his walk year, he was walking the straight and narrow.
And maybe he was.
He says now that he acted like an idiot when he was trying to save himself from a suspension on Biogenesis. But wouldn’t that have been the time to exhibit the kind of accountability he’s now practically demanding of the Astros, not after the fact, after he’d done his time?
By the way? In the same week he was talking about the Astros, here is what an exAstro named Collin McHugh said upon joining the Red Sox, sounding more accountable than just about anybody who played for the 2017, world champion Houston Astros:
“You’ve got to be willing to stick up for what you believe in and what you believe is right and what you believe is wrong. And I think a lot of the