DOUBLE TALK
A-Rod latest TV hire with virtually no credibility
N OT that it matters to ESPN, but it didn’t take long for Alex Rodriguez to remind his latest TV employers of what they blissfully try to ignore: Rodriguez is full of it.
Not only is he a proven liar with a career predicated on illegal drug enrichment, his current charms and telegenic looks still can’t mask his porous credibility.
Sunday night, during the Mets-Nationals game, Rodriguez made the astonishing, darn-the-luck claim that in 2001, instead of signing with the Rangers, he wanted to sign to play for the Mets; his heart was set on it. Left unsaid and unexplained was that he would have had to play for the Mets for roughly $150 million less than $252 million the Rangers offered.
The next day, Rodriguez’s out-of-the-blue (and orange) claim was dismissed as nonsense by the former Mets executives who were party to the negotiations, which apparently were brief, as the Mets had no shot.
But Rodriguez seems to suffer from the kind of megalomania that tells him he’s so special he can get away with doing and saying anything. And he can. Thus, as was said of Kaiser Wilhelm II, he wants to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral.
And now, as he claimed Sunday, he could kick himself for not signing with the Mets, a deal that would have paid him roughly $150 million less.
Yeah, he was never in it for the money.
While he was at it, Rodriguez should have thanked Bud Selig and MLBPA boss Donald Fehr for green-lighting the steroids era.
Add Rodriguez (FOX, ESPN) to the list of hires — Ray Lewis (ESPN, FOX), Pete Rose (FOX), Cris Carter (ESPN, FOX), Randy Moss (FOX, ESPN), Bobby Knight (ESPN), Warren Sapp (CBS/ Showtime, NFL Network) — whose notorious misdeeds once would have disqualified them from TV employ- ment, but are now unconscionably in demand.
ESPN, starting with Jim Valvano, has made a long habit of hiring any big-time, freshly fired, scandalized college football or basketball coach. Though Paul Pierce was among the NBA’s all-time anti-social acts, on and off the court, TNT couldn’t wait to hire him.
ESPN, naturally, will do nothing to have Rodriguez publicly amend such a sweet story that made neither sense nor history. For 21 years it employed lead baseball analyst, Joe Morgan, who had total recall of things that never happened, without censure.
In 2007, Mets infielder Luis Castillo made an awkward catch of a wind-blown pop-up in Wrigley Field. Morgan explained that Castillo is unfamiliar with the wind in Wrigley because, he said, “Castillo has played his entire career in the American League.”
Nonsense, rotten guesswork presented as fact. Castillo had played 10 seasons in the NL for the Marlins before playing two for the Twins in the AL. He was the Marlin who, in the 2003 NLCS, hit the infamous fly ball to spectator Steve Bartman — at Wrigley Field.
Later, when play-by-play man Jon Miller gently told Morgan that Castillo had played in the NL, Morgan ignored him.
But Joe Morgan carried on and so, too, will Alex Rodriguez.
So the question becomes: If we know better than to hire commentators with profound integrity deficits, why wouldn’t TV executives be at least as vigilant and protective of their names, reputations and networks?
What’s the upside? What’s the message?