The A-Rod story
So SI has reported that Alex Rodriguez was one of the players who tested positive in the 2003 penalty-free survey testing for steroids. Of course, this is after he left the Mariners anyway, and tests were supposed to be anonymous, so who knows if this is relevant, valid, legal, or whatever. Let’s just let the reporting play out.
As positively attached as some people are to Griffey, others seem to be just as negatively attached to A-Rod, which shows itself every time they come back to town. In a way it’s puzzling, considering that when they left town originally, one guy simply played out his time and exercised his collectively-bargained rights, causing no harm, while the other forced the team’s hand to make them give him what he wanted.
As you should know from the guidelines, talking about people’s steroid use in the comment threads will get your post deleted in short order. If the authors feel like posting about the topic at some point, they will. Until then, this is your thread for discussing it, and don’t waste our time bringing off-topic stuff into the other threads.
Updated Tuesday: Rodriguez is now saying that he used banned substances (but does not know which ones) while he was with the Rangers for the 2001-2003 seasons. For more, see… everywhere, pretty much.
Wow, nice covering up of history there. Or should I just say you are “misremembering” things?
Griffey said he wanted to leave to be closer to his family and ended up playing where his father played and where he grew up. No one really felt too jilted, because anyone that followed Griffey assumed if he were to leave that’s where he’d end up.
A-Rod said that he didn’t want to continue playing for us because he wanted to play for a winner.
He then went to the team that paid him the most money and allowed him to most pad his stats – the Texas Rangers.
People hate A-Rod because he tries to present an image of himself that is completely divorced from the reality that he is a lying, pretentious, stat-hungry, self-centered prick.
And don’t make this into a Seattle thing. People in Texas and Boston hate his guts too.
The interesting thing is that for all of his talents on the field, he is BY FAR the worst at image management of any superstar I can think of. I don’t count Bonds because I don’t think he really gives a shit. People see right through A-Rod.
Example: after Torre’s book came out the criticism was that Torre would say what he did. I heard absolutely no one indignant that Torre would say what he did about A-Rod because everyone assumes it to be true and is not the least bit surprised to hear about it.
The invective against A-Rod is far more than deserved. His sin is that as a superstar he is inept at projecting the image people want of him. Sure, it would be great if he was a superstar and the nicest guy in the world (BTW, none of us can possibly know how he really is).
If A-Rod said tomorrow I want to go back to the Mariners (and money wasn’t an issue) I would take him in a second. He is and will continue to be one of the great players in baseball.
Oh and by the way, Griffey was just as much prima donna as A-Rod.
I totally disagree. I’ve always thought it was stupid how Seattle fans hate A Rod and love Griffey. A-Rod never said he wanted to leave Seattle because he wanted to play for a winner. He never even said that he wanted to leave, and I don’t think he strongly did. He simply did what every single other athlete or person would have done: he accepted a quarter billion dollar contract.
As for A-Rod’s image, I swear people’s perception that he’s a “lying, pretentious, self-centered prick” is at the very least partially fabricated inside their own minds. He almost always says the right thing, he’s cordial with reporters, he insisted that Ripken play SS in the All-star game…to me he seems like a genuinely alright guy. Sure he’s not perfect, and you can’t be the best baseball player in the world and have zero ego, but all in all I think he’s pretty cool.
Griffey on the other hand seemed like much more of a primadonna, even while he was here. And yes, he did pout his way into forcing our organization to trade him in a disadvantageous deal. Now before the lynch mob comes to my door, I’ll say that I love Griffey as much as anyone else. But ever since A Rod left and became public enemy #1, I’ve always thought that the average Seattle sports fan was rather stupid, or maybe just delusional, for thinking that A Rod was such horrible guy compared to Griffey.
If you had read Torre and Verducci’s book Paul, you would understand why people weren’t indignant about what was said about A-Rod.
The point about Griffey isn’t that he made it known where he wanted to go and everyone already knew that, as you claim. The point is he forced the team’s hand and left them with little leverage to get an equitable return in trade. Things turned out all right with Mike Cameron, but that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t dislike this type of behavior.
I’m no huge A-Rod defender, but he isn’t the first or the last to play games with the media and management during free agency. Somehow many Seattleites believe he is.
I’m with Paul, there is an Eddie Haskell quality to A-Rod.
Griffey said he wanted to play close to home and then forced a trade to his home town team, where he signed a below market contract. Kirby Puckett said it wasn’t just about money and then signed for less money to stay with the Twins. A-Rod signed the biggest contract in history and then tried to say it wasn’t about the money blah blah, and then when as anyone could have predicted Texas continued to suck he forced a trade to the Yankees.
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It will be interesting to see if/how this report will impact his HOF induction.
Maybe I shouldn’t react this way, but I’ve been quite amused by the news all morning. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Maybe it’s all public image but that damage has been done so I’ll just grab some popcorn and enjoy the show. Besides, it might cause the Yankees some clubhouse issues and that’s never a bad thing.
People were upset at Griffey because of how he engineered his own trade. I lost it when in a post trade interview, he said, “They didn’t have to trade me.” Yeah, right. But we forgave “Junior” because he played here for a decade and put Seattle on the map more than the 1979 World Champion SuperSonics did. He also was more affable and did go to play near his family. I think it helped also that he didn’t tear up the league in Cincinnati.
People were upset with A-Rod because he is, yes, Eddie Haskell in cleats. He says all the right things then does what he wants. He talked about wanting to stay here and then takes a $250 million contract knowing the team can’t afford to get him any decent teammates with that albatross. He said Texas had a good, young ballclub and he was excited to be leading it. Then he was gone to New York, where everyone knew he was headed anyway. The Yankess haven’t won the World Series since. Wasn’t he the one whose contract extension was announced during the World Series, something EVERYBODY had agreed NOT to do?
Thinking back on the Griffey deal with Cincinatti…it is just very fortunate that Mike Cameron’s skillset was (and is) so undervalued or it would have been a much worse deal. It’s really hilarious to recall that the M’s wanted Pokey f’ing Reese in the deal and settled for Cameron. They wound up with the better player only because niether GM making the swap as able to properly evaluate the players involved.
It was the opting out that was announced, not the extension, and he hadn’t made any agreement, that’s a gentleman’s agreement between the clubs, not the players. Tacky it may have been, but there was nothing to tell a player that he (or his agent) shouldn’t say whatever they want to say during the World Series.
I don’t think that anyone is “misremembering” anything. Griffey forced the team to trade him. A-Rod left the team in free agency to accept 250 million dollars. Yeah, he went for the money, but do you think that Kirby Puckett – who despite his reputation was not that nice of a guy in reality – would have turned down a contract like that when the nearest alternative was nowhere in the ballpark?
A-Rod does seem too slick by half to me, but while that makes him distasteful to me, it didn’t make me hate him. Until this point I was hoping that he would take the home run record so that there would be no steroid controversy weighing upon it, but it looks like that’s out the window.
I think that if you ask any reporter who covered the M’s during Griffey’s tenure he will tell you that Griffey was indeed a major prima donna during his time here. He never really did grow up. The reporters, however, generally covered for him anyway and didn’t expose his behavior. Nonetheless I still love Griffey because Griffey is Griffey, which of course is a logical necessity and it’s strange to love someone because of a logical necessity, but there it is. I do dislike what he did, but how he left doesn’t define what he was for the Mariners in the 90′s. Nor will it make me forget that his swing was the most beautiful of his generation, perhaps ever. Watching him swing, like Michael Jordan try to score, is enough on its own to make someone love baseball.
IIRC, Griffey forced the team to trade him to Cincinnati and only Cincinnati because originally Gillick was going to move him to New York, the one city Griffey had time and again said that he would absolutely never play in as a home town. IIRC he didn’t like the way he or his dad was treated when Ken Griffey Sr. was a member of the Yankees. Yes, the move was to the Mets (involving Roger Cedeno, wasn’t it? Talk about dodging a bullet), but it was still something Griffey didn’t want to do and didn’t have to do. Also, the Payne Stewart crash had already limited Gillick’s options, as the whole point of the trade demand was to get Jr. closer to his family, who live in Cincy. I think M’s fans saw his demands as reasonable. It didn’t hurt that the Mariners may have come out ahead in the trade (Tomko and Antonio Perez never amounted to anything but Cameron may have been straight-up a better player than Griffey from 2000-2003 depending on how much you value defense).
I do agree that A-Rod is treated a lot more poorly than he should be. From Day 1 in his time in Seattle he was obviously waiting for his 6 years with the team to expire so he could get the most money on the open market. Perhaps he was too political, but his point was never to say “I want to play somewhere bigger and better than Seattle”. It was “I am A-Rod and I want money”. Keeping Seattle as a player in the market for his wares was a good business move.
Admittedly, I am an A-Rod hater, although I’ve also always thought the Yankees were rock-stupid for keeping Jeter at short. The aforementioned Torre book supposedly has an awesome bit where the former Yankees manager likens A-Rod to the villain in the movie Single White Female. Which means Jeter is Bridget Fonda. I don’t have a link anymore, but for me that was the greatest baseball article written since Doug Glanville ripped Curt Schilling for his poor play in Everquest.
Mariners fans have always bought into the “You Gotta Love These Guys” marketing idea. We just wanted somebody to love us back.
Randy didn’t. At least we got good value when we got rid of him.
Junior didn’t. But we understood that we had to let him go to even have a chance of affording A-Rod…and we bought into the heartwarming/ego protecting “…at least he’s going home” argument.
We put all of eggs in the A-Rod basket. We gambled that we could keep one of our reluctant superstars…and we lost.
What made us mad was how clear it was that we never had a chance of keeping A-Rod. We were just being toyed with, we were being used simply to jack his price up. There was no possible way, despite whatever A-Rod was saying to us at the time, that he was going to stay a Mariner.
Mariners fans were the spurned lover–suffering from the loss and the rejection, while the cause of that rejection seemed to wheel around in the door on the way out just long enough to twist the knife they’ve stabbed into our heart and say “By the way, I’ve never loved you…”
And, in a way…if you continue that tortured analogy, Junior becomes the girl we think we could have married had we not dumped her for the younger, more attractive girl who we foolishly believed we could keep. Probably wouldn’t have worked out either…but we’ll spend forever regretting our choices…and cursing the bitch who broke our hearts.
I personaly do not remember it as Junior ‘demanding’ a trade, nor ‘refusing’ to play in Seattle any longer. But rather, “I’m leaving in one year…trade me now to the Reds if you want value back in return.”
I find that much easier to swallow than, “I love the Mariners and don’t want to leave!”, then bolting and immediately stating that Seattle was a ‘nightmare’. One player was up-front with his intentions. The other was not.
They both did what they were ‘allowed’ to do according to the league rules. However, one guy didn’t lie through his teeth again and again in the process.
One other thing that we must remember, A-Rod had a meeting with Chucky and Pat after the 2000 season had wrapped up and assured them that he would give the M’s a shot at signing him, he wanted to play for a winner and it wasn’t all about the $$$. Then he did what he did. I’m not a huge Griffey supporter but at least he didn’t lie to Chuck and Pat.
Another great job at image management by Bud Selig. The comments about A-Rod’s bungling his own image management are spot-on, but he’s a PR genius compared to Ol Bud, who consistently has given fodder to the PED parasites (muck-raking reporters and grandstanding politicians) that they use to further trash baseball.
[off-topic]
The psychology of the fans who feel so strongly about one or both of the two departures is pretty funny, actually.
Griffey is the girlfriend who split up with them to go to another state to be with her family. The split was sad but amicable, and they’ve secretly harbored the hope that they’ll get back together someday. There’s no fondness more irrational than one fueled by distance and sentimental memories.
Arod was the girlfriend who dumped them for a guy who was younger, much richer, and better looking. It was a shock they’ve never gotten over or forgiven, and the secret certainty that he was correct in that assessment just fed the anger. There’s no rage more irrational than one fueled by wounded pride and a sense of inferiority.
People never think about what they’d do if they were in these player’s shoes. Even if they weren’t in their shoes, but were in a situation to get a significant pay raise, why wouldn’t they leave their current job for a raise? Maybe because they had grown up in that area. Maybe because they liked that particular job more than the one they’d be working to at the pay raise. Well none of those two factors or any other factors that would have kept A-Roid in Seattle applied and it was a great business opportunity for A-Roid to leave Seattle.
At least we got some sort of value for Griffey. Both players were worshiped so much here that them leaving made fans so bitter. If a player of less status, say a current guy like Yuni demanded a trade to one team and one team only, people wouldn’t care as much, and if when Yuni’s contract runs out he goes to the team that offers him the most money, like A-Roid, who cares, it may be a game to us, but it’s a business to them!
Hub: Did A-Rod really say Seattle was I nightmare? I think you might be thinking of Ray Allen, though I could be wrong.
I honestly believe Seattle DID have a distant chance at re-signing A-Rod. As remember, they offered him something like 90-some million for five years. That’s a solid offer, and it took an unprecedented offer to make that one unsignable. I think anyone who says he should’ve accepted that over a guarenteed 252 million over 10 years is in total denial.
Willie G…
Ray Allen never said anything of the sort. Ray Allen is always in the media saying positive things about Seattle, even after being traded and he was one of the players against the OK City move even after he was traded. Allen even said he was disappointed to be traded to Boston but at least it gives him an immediate chance to contend.
As for A-Roid, I think a lot of people thought they could have re-signed him. It was a solid offer but it wasn’t going to make him the highest paid guy in baseball for the next 8 years.
I still don’t think Griffey ever used steroids.
Do any of you guys remember when there was talk about A-Rod wanting to have the fences moved in 5-10 feet? I think it was right before he left too. Doubt there’s anything to be said about that, but interesting.
Personally, I can’t hate the guy. Some of my fondest memories involved watching A-Rod as a Mariner. Watching him and Griff going yard in the same inning at Fenway (I want to say back to back, but I don’t think A-Rod ever hit fourth as a Mariner, maybe for a single game)still sticks out in my head. I hate that he left under the pretext of “wanting to play for a winner,” because everyone knows when players say that they really are saying they want the most money (Josh Brown.) But seriously who passes up 10/250?
Roy Stuckey:
When traded, Ray told a Boston reporter: “I feel like I’ve been in the doldrums for the last 4 1/2 years.”
Not quite “nightmare,” but still not the nicest thing to say about his time in our fine city.
My 2 cents…
-When you sign for a quarter of a BILLION smackers, it sometimes DOES tend to be “about the money” regardless of what the athlete says. Especially after they join a last place team to be with a “winner.”
-I don’t think this should taint his Hall of Fame status, because I believe Sosa, McGwire, Palmeiro and Bonds should get in too. We don’t know how many pitchers they faced that were also taking them.
(Hey, at least we know Arod wasn’t on anything “enhancing” during the playoffs)
I distinctly recall his answer to a press question not long after signing with the Rangers: “Playing for Texas is a dream. Unlike Seattle, which was a nightmare.” [followed by chuckles amongst the press]
Joke? Maybe. But a very bad one indeed. It made my g/f at the time (now-spouse) throw her Mariner Moose ‘Beanie’ at the TV. Quite a vivid memory.
Haha, geez, I don’t remember that. He couldn’t have been serious, could he? A very bad joke indeed.
The Doldrums thing is nothing against the city of Seattle… It’s a knock against the Sonics’ management and ownership that couldn’t put together a decent team! The same ownership that sold our team to an out of state ownership group with the intent to move the Sonics. He knew he’d never have a chance to win there!
As for A-Roid, look what happened after he left!
In the winter of 2001, before he’d played a game with the Rangers, A-Rod signed a letter to Boeing executives suggesting that they–who were looking to move their HQ out of Seattle–follow him to Dallas. Not exactly something to endear him to the people of this city.
Griffey, on the other hand, continued his support of the Boys and Girls Clubs of King County and simply did the same thing for the Cincinnati clubs when he left.
When Rodriguez refused to negotiate an extension before the 2000 season, that was really the sign, wasn’t it? Why did everyone think he would magically sign once he had played out the contract?
Also, I believe that Gillick, Armstrong, and Lincoln bungled the negotiations once they came up. If you will recall, at the time Gillick was in favor of three year deals and had to really be pushed to go beyond that. Fine if the deal is for your standard free agent. But for the best player on the planet and maybe the best of all time? I think if they had gone the eight years the money might not have been such an issue. He had just played out his age 24 year. Incredible as it seems, locking him in till age 32 at somewhat below the Ranger dollar offer would have been a steal. The Mariners also got outclassed in their presentation–cheap binders falling apart, etc. Inexcusable for a company with hi-tech parents. The revenue streams were really gearing up at that point but they just weren’t ready to deal. Yes, the Rangers negotiated against themselves, but the Mariners never got themselves into the game either.
As for Griffey, I wonder why no one mentions his broad hints at the time that as a 10/5 player, he not only could choose his destination but could influence (indeed, weaken) the package gained in return so that his new team would not be unduly hamstrung by the trade. His old team could just go hang, giving Bowden enormous clout in dealing with Gillick. That’s loyalty for you. I don’t understand the endless love for this once-great player.
There are some more Griffey posts in the queue, btw.
Hub: Did A-Rod really say Seattle was I nightmare?
I distinctly recall his answer to a press question not long after signing with the Rangers: “Playing for Texas is a dream. Unlike Seattle, which was a nightmare.†[followed by chuckles amongst the press]
I remember it as him saying..”last night I had a nightmare…I woke up in Seattle”
This whole story strikes me as odd, not just the A-Rod stuff, but also the part where Gene Orza tipped off at least one player to a drug test.
Knowing how the owners and union have been around this subject and the wink-wink-nudge-nudge about it all they’ve been with each other, it just seems strange that this story makes the owners look wronged.
As for Griffey/A-Rod, I don’t know. Maybe it was all about the $252M. Maybe ’99 was a bad season and 2000 was a wild card year. Maybe it was that in ’99 we were flying high in the dotcom boom while early 2001 was the dotcom bust and rapidly rising unemployment.
Or maybe it was because we all knew Griffey was cantankerous and prickly and were OK with him going, while A-Rod’s departure felt more like a betrayal, like we made him what he was only to have him turn on us.
How did the Mariners or the city of Seattle make him what he was? Did the city of Seattle have 2 seasons with a 160 OPS+ by the age of 24 for him? Did the Mariners make him the best shortstop of the late 1990s and early 2000s by a large margin? I will grant you that the city of Seattle, or rather the writers, took away his MVP in 1996 by giving Griffey their 1st place votes, but I don’t think that’s the kind of thing most people mean when they say “we made him what he was”.
I think joser’s description of the jilted lover is pretty accurate, and I’ll also concede that I’m probably overreacting due to my visceral hatred for A-Rod.
Everyone knew Griffey is/was an overly sensitive guy. I’m not arguing that point at all. And even though I don’t remember Griffey demanding a trade to Cincinnati, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case. As I just said, he’s a bit of a head case, and Howard Lincoln is the same way. Those two just did not get along at all.
One said “I want to be traded to Cincinatti” (assuming he did in fact demand it, which I’ll assume is true for the sake of argument)
The other said “I want to go to a winner. A team that can get to the World Series”. And he then signed with what was at the time one of the absolute worst teams in the league, for such a high price that there was no feasible way for them to sign better players to improve.
I’m saying that A-Rod flat-out lied.
Claiming that A-Rod lied over saying that he wanted to go to a “winner” seems a little disingenuous.
As bad as Texas had been in 2000 they were coming off two years as division champions and were making it very clear that they were willing to put an awful lot of money (beyond the ¼ billion to A-Rod himself) into making that a reality.
Their entire presentation was about convincing him that they would be winners, in addition to offering him a contract vastly superior to anything else on the market.
They had already committed a fair amount of money that off-season to other big names and they did a good job of selling that they would be winners. Certainly the overwhelming body of the press believed their pitch and there’s no reason to believe that A-Rod didn’t either.
That his ability to evaluate talent was no better than their’s (or the media’s) so he didn’t see additions like Galarraga, Caminiti, Petkovsek as being below average players hardly suggests that he lied.
Basically, Texas were stupid, Alex fell for it.
In January 2000, I won the initial “Who Wants to Be a Mariner” trivia game at the FanFest. My prize was an all-expense paid trip for two to spring training. We were housed in the same hotel as the Milwaukee Brewers minor league teams. While sitting in the hot tub, I struck up a conversation with the second baseman of the Brewers’ Triple A affiliate in Indianapolis. It just so happened that he was a friend and high school teammate of ARod. He told me in no uncertain terms that ARod was NOT going to sign with the Mariners after the season despite the fact that the he was telling the M’s and the media that he was very interested in staying. Had he been forthright with the M’s at that time, they could have traded him and received compensation. Alas, they received nothing. That should tell you something about his character.
In January 2000, I won the initial “Who Wants to Be a Mariner” trivia game at the FanFest. My prize was an all-expense paid trip for two to spring training. We were housed in the same hotel as the Milwaukee Brewers minor league teams. While sitting in the hot tub, I struck up a conversation with the second baseman of the Brewers’ Triple A affiliate in Indianapolis. It just so happened that he was a friend and high school teammate of ARod. He told me in no uncertain terms that ARod was NOT going to sign with the Mariners after the season despite the fact that he was telling the M’s and the media that he was very interested in staying. Had he been forthright with the M’s at that time, they could have traded him and received compensation. Alas, they received nothing. That should tell you something about his character.
My sentiments exactly, Zzyzx.
Though ironically, in A-Rod’s case, he wound up dumping his wife for the older woman.
As for whether or not today’s revelation will affect his future HOF status, I think it’ll probably be safe to say that both he and Griffey will be in eventually — though if I ever make it back east in the future to take my kids to the Hall, I will certainly enjoy viewing Mike Cameron’s four-HR bat from that White Sox game more than I will either A-Rod or Griffey’s plaques.
Claiming that A-Rod lied over saying that he wanted to go to a “winner†seems a little disingenuous.
As bad as Texas had been in 2000 they were coming off two years as division champions and were making it very clear that they were willing to put an awful lot of money (beyond the ¼ billion to A-Rod himself) into making that a reality.
I will enjoy viewing the Randy Johnson plaque because then I will be able to instruct my children as to what a mullet is.
Art Thiel, 2003:
“The day after the Mariners opened Safeco Field in 1999, the club, then run primarily by CEO John Ellis, president Chuck Armstrong and general manager Woody Woodward, offered center fielder Ken Griffey Jr. an eight-year deal worth $138 million, for an average annual value of $17.25 million.
Later that season, the Mariners offered shortstop Alex Rodriguez a deal that was also for eight years. Including a $16 million signing bonus, it would have been worth $117.5 million, for an average annual value of $14.7 million.
As you may have heard, neither offer was accepted. For different, well-known reasons, each wanted out of Seattle. Griffey accepted less money to go to his hometown of Cincinnati. Rodriguez took way more money to go to Texas, and now both are clawing desperately to get away from those loser outfits.”
Unlike a lot of people (apparently) I’ve never really felt particularly strongly about ARod one way or another — like a bunch of other really talented players, I appreciate what he does when he does it and that’s about the end of it.
But I can’t help but notice that this is happening to a player who was already a lightning-rod (ahem), and it’s happening to a Yankee in New York. With football over and the Knicks/Nets pretty much irrelevant, this is going to be topic one through ten for the NY Post, WFAN, etc. It’s is going to be far bigger than Giambi (not least because Giambi was already becoming something of an after-thought on the team and he essentially admitted it and threw himself on the mercy of public opinion); in fact it could easily escalate into a level of scrutiny and furor exceeding anything previously, including Bonds (and of course Bonds and his pending trial are still out there to throw more fuel on the conflagration — Bonds as the sideshow to the ARod controversy, how about that?) This could get really big and really ugly. And if you could pick one team to have it happen to….
(Unfortunately, the Yankees seem better able to play in spite of distractions than any other team in baseball).
Hey, the Devils and Rangers are both playing pretty well at the moment.
Seriously, though, you’re right…this does have the potential of being even bigger than the Bonds controversy in the Big Apple — if only because the sports papparazzi is so rabid in that town, they act as if it’s the end of the world if Jeter goes 0-for-4 the previous night.
Fwiw, which I don’t think is much, I was treated to Bruce Jacobs, who does the afternoon radio show on Fox Sports Radio, and he considered the ARod story just this side of the second coming in importance (and Donald Fehr apparently the equivalent of Judas).
It will be interesting to see the real fallout, as opposed to the fallout that comes from a 24 hour news cycle. Pretty clearly, there have been some leaks of personal medical information that violated both federal law and the collective bargaining agreement. I have no idea what the reliability of these tests is, the manner in which samples were taken, stored and tested or any of the myriad issues (see Landis, Floyd) that arise from the manner in which these things are done. Given that the players agreed to this testing on an anonymous, no penalty basis, the kinds of safeguards and personal protections from false positives would not be in place.
Perceptions with both players have changed over the years for better or worse.
I loved Griffey and A-Rod. I still follow both of their careers. For A-Rod I think his life just got a whole lot harder in NY. His fanbase is rocky at best in NY.
Barry Bonds is the HR king, A-Rod is on pace to break that record…but when my kids grow up they will all know who Hank Aaron is and how he is the real HR king.
Excellent points, all, and exactly the kind of subtleties that get completely lost in TV and radio coverage. (If MLB TV was a real channel and not a mouthpiece there’d be a chance for some real electronic journalism on the topic, but it’s not so there isn’t). I have my doubts we’re ever going to get a clear-(ahem) eyed summary of the issue in its entirety: the Bonds and Clemens trials are focused on narrow points of law that are really peripheral to the actual PED-in-baseball issue, and both MLB and the Player’s Union have a common cause in burying it and moving on asap.
Especially since Aaron was receiving death threats and no small amount of racial epithets from fans during his pursuit of Ruth’s record, making his achievement all the more impressive than Bonds’ chase of him or (presumably) ARod’s chase of Bonds. This is the list that makes Aaron still the undisputed King of the batsmen — he’s already withstood Bonds and I doubt ARod will challenge him either.
Whatever public reasons each of them gave for leaving or wanting to leave, I don’t care. The only thing coloring my judgement is this: one of these players honored his contract, the other didn’t.
I hate to sound like a mutual admiration society, but that is such a critical point to understand: while the union and management may like to blame one another, in the end they both were on the same side (i.e., ostrich-city) during the steroids crisis, for the same reason (rhymes with honey) and they both would like to move on as quickly as they can, for exactly the same reason.
The hate against Arod is simply ridiculous. Seattle fans want to criticize him for taking the biggest contract in baseball history – how can you blame him for that? If you hate him for that, you’d be a hypocrite because there isn’t a person alive who wouldn’t have taken that offer.
But because he’s had such massive success for so long and at such an early age, people hate him. People hate him because of how effortless baseball seems to him, neglecting to see he’s the hardest working guy in baseball…first to the field to work out every day, one of the last to leave.
People who want to mis-remember the history of events and forget that it was Griffey, not Arod, who hurt the team and forced their way out is further proof of selective amnesia.
I, along with every one of my baseball friends, are sick and tired of the steroids talk. Nobody cares except for self-righteous people who feel they live in glass houses and have never done anything wrong to get ahead. I say let all ball players take whatever they want. If they want to shorten their lives for their paychecks and our amusement, so be it. It’s their choice.
Alex said “It’s not about the money,” right before he took that $252M contract to go to the worst team in the same division, and not without an offer from us first. He is a hypocrite, and that has nothing to do with his God-given baseball talent.
And I’m a big fan of Alex, by the way. Alex the great baseball player, though, not Alex the transparently fake, self-perpetuating PR monkey and liar. Everything Verducci wrote in Torre’s book, and the quotes attributed within to Torre regarding Alex, are all 100% on-point. He is so transparently image conscious in his dealings with people that he is difficult to see as truly sincere, and that is going back to his time here. If you’ve ever met him more than once or twice, you know.
I guess that’s where the real irony is here, that he just did more damage to his image than he can ever undo, and it seems it was all in an effort to stretch the limits of a skillset already far beyond the scope of almost everyone else to ever play the game. What a stupid, stupid waste.
I hope he hits 900 and everyone calls him A-Fraud. I’ll still enjoy watching him hit them, though hopefully not too many against us. It’ll be the best of both worlds.
SMB – Ironically, a friend of mine has been calling him “A-Fraud” for years. Too funny.
When all is said and done, A-Rod’s biography may well end up reading like the sequel to The Picture Of Dorian Gray.
Based on the records of the two teams in the seasons leading up to A-Rod leaving, he probably thought he was going to a winner.
Baseball Prospectus picked the M’s to finish last in the division in 2001.
As far as medical confidentiality goes;
if a person is involved with any illegal substance,how
would this apply?Alex R was using a substance
that could only be provided for a legitimate
medical reason;his case does not meet that criteria.
It does. If you tell your doctor during the course of an examination that you’re on winstrol you’re smuggling back from Mexico, they can’t and shouldn’t turn you on.
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