A-Rod must drop rehearsed PED lines

NEW YORK — While he hardly lit up the booth in his ESPN debut last week (Yankees-Twins), Alex Rodriguez generated big-time buzz, which is exactly what the Bristol Faculty, or the Foxies, or any other TV outlet on his non-stop Mea Culpa Tour, is paying Grand Master Phony for.

It’s best not to take Rodriguez seriously. That’s the only way to handle someone trying to spin dry his own twisted past. Remember, he did not go into full metamorphosis mode until realizing his best chance of getting back into baseball’s good graces, getting a TV gig, and getting into Cooperstown, was to fess up.

This has worked extremely well for Rodriguez, especially since most of the baseball media now either believe him or are extremely forgiving.

Yet, last Thursday — aided and abetted by Matt Vasgersian and Jessica Mendoza, who didn’t want anything to do with pressing him or asking follow-up questions (this was an exhibition game, they had plenty of time) — A-Rod offered a flimsy blueprint on handling a PED suspension (the conversation began as a discussion of Twins shortstop Jorge Polanco being suspended for 80 games after testing positive for Stanozolol), how to deal with life after exile and, on another matter, how Giancarlo Stanton should handle the New York media.

While his spiel required some soul searching on his part it came off highly scripted. It totally lacked emotion or sincerity. It wasn’t credible.

Instead of going for real spontaneity, A-Rod’s commentary sounded like it had been rehearsed and discussed at length before the telecast. It’s one thing to react to a question you know is coming, quite another when you are answering it on the fly.

“For me it took a while,” A-Rod answered, after Mendoza asked him how long it took to figure out how to deal with his PED situation and eventual season-long suspension. “I chose to go pointing fingers first, hired a bunch of people (lawyers and PR operatives) and ultimately it’s not their problem, it’s my problem. I was the quarterback. I was making the decisions both during, then after.”

Either Vasgersian or Mendoza then should have asked him: “Didn’t you realize this during the scorched earth policy you unleashed on baseball and the Yankees? Why didn’t you discontinue it sooner?”

Instead, A-Rod continued on, talking about how he wanted to return to baseball making sure he had a “different attitude” and was a “different person.”

All that was missing was a sad violin playing in the background. Yet even though he came off disingenuous, Rodriguez is now the only baseball analyst working a national gig who can talk, from first-hand experience, on what it was like to be caught cheating baseball while caught up in the sleazy world of PEDs.

Still, it’s worth wondering if a lightly watched Thursday afternoon exhibition telecast will be the last time we hear Rodriguez shed light on the dark side of his career. Or will we hear it again — perhaps a more sincere version — with millions watching under the bright lights of “Sunday Night Baseball”?

Stay tuned.