A HOME RUN FOR BUD, MLB

Get their wish as rest of A-Rod career in doubt

Now we know why the late Michael Weiner, in one of his last acts as executive director of the Players’ Association, urged Alex Rodriguez to make a deal. Now we know why commissioner Bud Selig's steroids sheriff, Rob Manfred, was so confident that arbitrator Fredric Horowitz would not be distracted by all the sound and fury signifying nothing from baseball's Public Enemy No. 1 and rule just on the facts of the case, in accordance with baseball's joint drug policy.

Now we know why A-Rod stormed out of the hearing on his initial 211-game suspension, refusing to testify under oath in front of Horowitz, and instead chose to continue lying about all of his transgressions against the game in the friendly, nonlegally binding forum of WFAN radio.

Because, as we have now learned, those facts left no doubt that A-Rod had repeatedly violated baseball's drug policy, in addition to obstructing justice in MLB’s effort to get to the bottom of the south Florida Biogenesis scandal that ultimately brought him down. We’re talking his own voluminous text messages and emails here, to Anthony Bosch, the proprietor of that clinic, in which he solicited, obtained and later raved about the effectiveness of Bosch’s performance- enhancing products.

For not only does A-Rod now go down as the dirtiest player ever in baseball, he also has to be the dumbest. He knew what he did, knew that baseball's evidence was substantial enough that his own union leader, Weiner, urged him to cut his losses and make a deal — as all the other players caught up in the Biogenesis scandal did. But he was having none of it.

Instead, he hired even more lawyers, most notably the blowhard Joe Tacopina, who convinced him to start suing everyone in sight — if nothing else as subterfuge to the case at hand. Tacopina and the rest of his high-priced legal team convinced A-Rod that baseball had no case against him and that he shouldn't spend a single game in the penalty box.

Remember when, two days after calling the arbitration hearing “a farce” and “f---ing bulls---!”, Rodriguez said his lawyers had “crushed it” in front of Horowitz? Oh yeah, they really crushed it. And now they’re telling their client they need to go to federal court to get this suspension overturned. More money from his pocket to theirs, in another fruitless exercise.

Because not only would that mean making Horowitz's written decision and all the damning evidence of A-Rod’s relentless pursuit of detection-proof PEDs public, it could also lead to criminal exposure for Rodriguez, certainly if he testified under oath. His lawyers could tell him — but probably won’t because it isn’t what he wants to hear — that historically courts have been loath to interfere (as in maybe one case in 10,000) in a ruling issued under collective bargaining.

In the end, the $31 million in salary and performance-bonus money A-Rod loses by being slammed for the entire 2014 season by Horowitz will be but a drop in the bucket compared to his legal fees.

You would think by now, A-Rod would start to realize what a chump he's been. But the narcissist in him won’t let that happen. He’s told so many lies he believes them. It’s everyone else’s fault — Selig, Manfred, the players’ union, Horowitz, Yankee president Randy Levine, the Yankee doctors, the media — this decision has come down so hard on him. Maybe when A-Rod’s accountant shows him the legal tab that accumulated after he shunned Weiner’s advice to cut a deal, he’ll at least realize what a fool he's been.

Meanwhile, the Yankees can take that $25 million in saved payroll and put it right into their Masahiro Tanaka fund. As for Selig, who staked his legacy on this case — as the commissioner who cleaned up baseball from the steroids scourge — taking down A-Rod is the equivalent of a walk-off grand slam home run.

As the case wore on last summer, with A-Rod and his lawyers becoming more and more defiant and openly contemptuous of the commissioner, Selig threatened to take matters into his own hands, under his “best interest of baseball” powers, and dole out a lifetime ban to the disgraced Yankee. He was talked out of it by Manfred, who assured him they had all the evidence they needed to get the maximum penalty they wanted through the collective bargaining process.

Selig wanted Alex Rodriguez out of baseball for good, wanted the game cleansed of this narcissistic, cheating phony. Saturday, arbitrator Fredric Horowitz and baseball’s collectively-bargained drug justice system took care of that for him.