Sadly, A-rod and the circus overshadow what matters
STATE OF GAME: So many great storylines this season have been drowned out by the blaring of the Biogenesis scandal
It just keeps getting better, doesn’t it? Alex Rodriguez is now refusing to comment on his situation, saying, “I think that’s behind us now.”
This, perforce, raises the question, What’s behind him?
The 211-game suspension handed down by Major League Baseball? The drug tests? His association with Biogenesis? His relationship with the Yankees? The 387 lawsuits that have been threatened since this dramedy began? Really, who knows? All we know is A-Rod, the world’s most disingenuous person, now wants to concentrate on the game. As if.
It can, of course, never be just about baseball again for Rodriguez.
He guaranteed that by creating this circus in the first place.
At this point, A-Rod claiming he wants this to be about baseball is like Bernie Madoff saying he wants to be known for his charitable works. It will never be that simple for the Yankees’ shortstop and MLB. He has to know that. Well, doesn’t he? OK, maybe it isn’t that simple after all.
That’s the one thing we’ve learned over the last couple of months.
Rodriguez, through his battalion of lawyers and a cast of characters who belong in a Coen brothers movie, has managed to make this about everything other than his use of performance-enhancing drugs.
At various times it’s been about MLB’s investigation (“Despicable, unethical and potentially illegal,” according to lawyer David Cornwell) or the Yankees mishandling of his medical file (see Joseph Tacopina, another lawyer, on The Today Show) or his very presence in the game (see Ryan Dempster last Sunday night).
I mean, it’s all been spectacular entertainment, but it hasn’t been about baseball or PEDs, which is supposed to be the point of the exercise. And now A-Rod wants to concentrate on baseball? Puh-leeze. The irony, of course, is for the last month, the Rodriguez story has buried any number of positive storylines within the game.
There are terrific pennant races taking place in the AL East and West. Detroit, Atlanta and the Dodgers have all had remarkable seasons.
The resurrection of the Pittsburgh Pirates is a wonderful feel-good story.
The Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig has been one of the most exciting rookies to come into the game in a decade.
And for most of this season, baseball fans have been trapped in never-ending A-Rod news cycle.
Want more irony? While the media has been consumed with the sideshow, the Yankees have made their way back into the pennant race.
With a lineup that’s been held together with duct tape and crazy glue, the Yanks had actually won nine of 12 before last night’s game, and while A-Rod isn’t quite the 40-home run, 120 RBI guy of five years back, he’s contributed. This raises another question. What if the Yankees come back and win the AL East with a third baseman who’s playing under a 211-game suspension?
Think about that one for a minute.
You suppose there will be an end to this. You suppose that, this offseason, A-Rod will exhaust his appeals and begin serving his sentence.
Maybe then the baseball world can focus on the real issue — is Biogenesis an isolated case or is the game again polluted by dopers? Sadly, that point has been drowned out by the more colourful sound bites supplied by A-Rod and his camp.
But that’s the one you’d like to know for sure. In the wake of McGwire and Sosa, BALCO and Barry Bonds, a sense of normalcy had returned to baseball.
The players looked normal. Their home run totals were normal. The game looked normal.
That was also a game worth talking about, the game that exists in some corner of A-Rod’s conscience.
And maybe it’s still there for baseball fans to enjoy.
It would just be a lot easier to enjoy if Rodriguez disappeared.