Rodriguez: A golden boy’s steroid confession

This is “the worst news baseball could have gotten,” said Sean McAdam in the Boston Herald. With fan excitement building as pitchers and catchers report to spring training, we find out that “the best player on the most recognized team has been nabbed for steroids.” Sports Illustrated broke the news this week that Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, the highest-paid player in the game, failed a supposedly anonymous drug test in 2003. Rodriguez confirmed that report in an interview with ESPN, admitting that he took steroids from 2001 to 2003 because he felt a lot of pressure “to perform at a high level” after he signed a 10-year, $252 million contract. A-Rod was supposed to be “the protector of baseball’s alleged new Clean Age,” said Drew Sharp in the Detroit Free Press, and eventually seize the all-time home-run record from the juiced-up Barry Bonds. Well, it’s not going to happen. A-Rod is “forever A-Roid now,” and baseball’s integrity is dead.

Give A-Rod some credit for coming clean, said Tim Cowlishaw in The Dallas Morning News. Like other players accused of enhancing their performances with illegal substances, he could have given some vague, non-denial denial, or refused to discuss the past, or blamed shady, syringe-wielding personal trainers. Instead, Rodriguez gave us an actual “admission of guilt,” saying the culture of baseball was “loose” back then and that he was “stupid” and “naïve.” A-Rod’s apology was doubtless more of a public-relations exercise than a genuine act of contrition, but with the honesty bar set so low by his disgraced predecessors, his willingness to directly address his steroid use was a “step in the right direction.”

This was more like a “televised plea bargain” than an apology, said Phil Sheridan in The Philadelphia Inquirer. In very carefully chosen words, Rodriguez admitted to using drugs only during his three-year stint with the Texas Rangers. This was a clear attempt to remove any taint from his “early years as a phenom in Seattle and his superstar seasons, including the future ones, as a Yankee,” thus keeping alive some hope of his entering the Baseball Hall of Fame. Forgive my cynicism, said Israel Gutierrez in The Miami Herald, but are we really expected to believe that he used steroids only while playing in the white-hot crucible of rural Texas, but then relaxed and saw the error of his ways while playing in the sleepy backwater of New York City? Something tells me A-Rod may still be “holding back some truth.”

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