A-Rod Takes His Medicine (Legally This Time)

"A-Rod is not a douchebag." With this statement, my wife nearly caused me to run off the road, for I do indeed think A-Rod is a douchebag and was surprised to hear a defense of him come from the passenger seat. She had heard a portion of A-Fraud's press conference on the radio and thought he came off sounding pretty good. I watched the entire thing on tv and couldn't disagree with her more.

Let the record show that I can't stand Alex Rodriguez for many reasons that long pre-date his steroid revelations. I give him credit for standing up, admitting he used banned substances and taking some lumps for it. That alone is far more than Mark "I'm not here to talk about the past" McGwire has done. And Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have clung so tightly to their lies that they are in jeopardy of serving time for perjury. (However, I really feel the Feds must surely have better things to investigate than whether overgrown boys were on the juice. I know, I know-they are being accused of lying to Congress, a big no-no. But, in my opinion, it was a foolish waste of time and taxpayer dollars to haul them in front of Congress in the first place.) As for A-Roid, had he given more open answers today, I would have been even more impressed. Instead, he was trying to do some image polishing with a wink and a nod; just like his PR army instructed, no doubt.

To me, there is no halfway here; if he went this far, then we need full disclosure. I don't mean that I need to know which ass cheek he got his injections in, but tell us what you were using. Playing coy, using steroid nicknames, and saying he didn't even know if he was using them correctly doesn't really wash with me. He must think I am young and naive if he thinks I believe, as he said, that he was too young, stupid and naive to know better. First of all he wasn't that young when he rocked the juice. He was age 25,26 and 27 during the seasons he juiced. He kept saying he was a stupid kid,23,at the time, but anybody with a brain can calculate what age he actually was at the time. Not that that distinction even matters. Age 23 isn't a kid and I know plenty of 23-year-olds who are mature, intelligent people capable of making the right decision. Rodriguez's transgressions were no silly youthful indiscretions and his claims to that effect just make him even less genuine. Here is a man blessed with more athletic ability than most humans and he still feels the need to cheat. I believe every world class athlete knows exactly what they are putting in their bodies. Don't insult my intelligence by telling me that well, "We knew they weren't tic tacs." Ha, ha, ha. No shit, Dr. Dummy.

It was just this casual "fakeness" that really upset me. He wants to get out in front of this story, but doesn't want to do the heavy lifting. There were too many quotes and examples of this to list them all, so here are only a few. He said God put him in a position to help "make the world a better place" by spreading the anti-steroid message. Please, that one doesn't even need analysis. Then he said he just wanted to be judged from this day forward. That's exactly the tone the entire press conference had for me. Let me throw the reporters a few bones, sound as contrite as a cardboard cutout possibly can and then I can sweep this entire mess under the rug. It's not that easy. Truthfully, I don't give a damn what these guys do to their bodies. Not my liver, not my balls. However, many people do care so there is no way this story is going away. The last straw for me, though, was when a reporter asked A-Rod if injecting the steroids like he had, was cheating. Alex would have gained an enormous amount of respect from me had he simply looked into the camera and said yes. Instead, he dodged the question. Nice honesty, douchebag.