During the upcoming 8 game home stand in NY. Given that he is in theory off the juice or has a new drug that can't be detected, I wonder how this will all impact his HOF situation.
I think most writers are going to put him in the same category as Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, etc. 3000 hits, likely finish career at #4 on all time HR list...no cigar. I wonder what the Yankees will do to celebrate his 3000th hit. Think it'll look like this?
So ARod's 3000th hit was caught by the "Greatest" ball catching fan of our generation!! He's not giving it back. LOL>.. http://espn.go.com/newyork/mlb/story/_/id/13117149/fan-caught-alex-rodriguez-3000th-hit-not-planning-return-new-york-yankees-player
Another HR and five more RBIs for Rodriguez tonight vs Detroit. He will probably never see the HOF in spite of umber that will eclipse 99% of everyone who played the game. But you have to ask yourself if this is really anything new. The 50s and 60s were the age of amphetamines and a lot of players took speed to get up for the game. Mickey Mantle talked openly about it. The 70s and 80s saw players doing LSD and coke. The 90s into the early 2000s were the age of PEDs. Add in the corked bats, spitballs etc. and it is plain to see that shenanigans and baseball go together like hotdogs and mustard. Even baseball itself joined in by diluting its talent through expansion, bringing in the outfield walls, lowering the pitching mound and bringing on the DH. It's a game whose players can only be judged in the context of time when they played.
The game of baseball is not defined by its miscreant behavior, just like society as a whole is not defined by the criminal behavior within. Rodriguez, like Pete Rose and others, is an enormously talented player, possibly one of the most talented in history, who has made willful, bad decisions for which he has paid and will continue to pay the lifelong consequences. For me, the story ends there. Absent integrity, the statistics are meaningless.
I can't think of a sport that is even remotely as defined by bad behavior than baseball. It is steeped in rule breaking from every angle.
Yeah players from all decades not only took drugs but when they were caught they lied about it. Then they sued baseball. And if that wasn't enough they sued their own union. Musial, Aaron, Banks, Clemente, they were all scumbags like Arod.
The fact is that the press protected players back in the day. The only thing we know about them is whatever salacious tidbits they were willing to give up themselves. Jim Bouton's Ball Four was groundbreaking in the day. All I'm saying is that this game is legendary for its rule bending and breaking and it is considered the Flavor of the game. Whether it's loading baseballs with spit, snot, hair tonic, oil pine tar or just an Emory board scuff-up or the hitters using cork, pine tar, ball bearings the rules are flaunted. There are guys in Cooperstown who would be cause to put up a For Sale sign in your yard if they had moved in next to you. When you talk about integrity in baseball, it is very narrowly defined.
Yeah we all like to think our hero's are real hero's...but they are not. They are regular guys with a special talent that they get paid a lot of money to showcase for us adoring fans. I'm sure there are plenty of guys like Craig Biggio, family men, straight shooters...but also more than a few who break any rule they can. It's not limited to baseball though, I'm sure our basketball hero's and football hero's also have among their numbers guys with feet of clay. Sometimes they are just good at faking a facade, Steve Garvey immediately comes to mind. Warren Moon publically had a squeaky clean image and was married to a lady who was a lawyer who defended and counseled women who had been abused. Well they had to call the police to their house one night and then it came out he wasn't squeaky clean and she probably was a poor choice to defend abused women since she was unable to deal with her abuse..till it became public. Nope...don't get to close to your hero's!