Ripping A-Roid: New National Pastime
Tipsheet wasn’t surprised by the Alex Rodriguez steroid allegations – and not because Jose Canseco pointed his illegally juiced finger at him.
A-Rod was just another self-absorbed superstar trying to stay ahead in the Home Run Era. How many top players didn’t experiment with performance-enhancing drugs during that period?
We’ll never know, of course, but it’s easy to presume that the abuse was widespread. The A-Rod revelations speak to that, to dismay of fans everywhere.
Still, the pundits are laying lumber on his backside:
Dwight Perry, Seattle Times: “A-Fraud with the Yankees, A-Roid with the Rangers? Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003 when he played for the Texas Rangers, reported Sports Illustrated, citing four sources. What, that wasn’t vitamin B-12 he grabbed out of Rafael Palmeiro’s locker?”
Greg Cote, Miami Herald: “Now A-Rod, still in his prime at 33, is lumped with Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire and all of the other fallen stars whose names and reputations have taken on stink and mud. Might Rodriguez’s future as a certain Hall of Famer even be in jeopardy? You wonder. You wonder about a lot of things now, including a likelihood that the player didn’t happen to test positive for steroids the one and only time he had used them.”
Mike Lupica, New York Daily News: “Alex Rodriguez has a chance here to say what you wish a lot of guys like him would say in circumstances like this. To stand up. Unless he’s going to go the other way and say that it’s all a lie, say the whole thing is a giant conspiracy against him the way the pathetic Floyd Landis still does. But if Rodriguez does say this is all a lie, he’d better be telling the truth.”
Ray Ratto, San Francisco Chronicle: “Nobody within the baseball establishment is to be trusted on this issue. Ever, in any context. Not Bud Selig or his 30 bosses. Not Don Fehr or the union hierarchy. Not the players, not the media, nobody. Everything you know, you don’t, because everything someone else tells you they know, they don’t either. They’re either ignorant, dishonest, out of the loop or all three.”
Mike Vaccaro, New York Post: “The fact is, what we already knew was that the whole 15-year era deserves its own asterisk. And what we keep finding out only stamps that asterisk bolder and darker and deeper. Alex Rodriguez? If Sports Illustrated’s story is true - and Rodriguez himself sure doesn’t sound like an aggrieved, innocent victim in it, with his first reaction being, quote, ‘You’ll have to talk to the union’ - all that does is wrap the whole era into a neat bow.”
Jayson Stark, ESPN.com: In baseball, we love our numbers. And we love our heroes. And that brings us to Alex Rodriguez, a man who has committed a crime he doesn’t even understand: A crime against the once-proud history of his sport.”
Mark Kriegel, FoxSports.com: “No one really cares if football players do steroids. They tend to die young, anyway. So what? But baseball is different. Baseball is a game of numbers, its history and its easily quantifiable records are inextricably intertwined, coming together as consecrated numerology. Legends are identifiable by their digits: 714 is Babe Ruth; 755, Hank Aaron; 61* is another way of saying Roger Maris; .406 is shorthand for Ted Williams. 56, Joe DiMaggio. And so on. When you mess with those numbers, you mess with The Game. And that’s exactly what Rodriguez has done.”
Audio and video tributes to A-Rod are filling up the Internet, like this one:
MICHAEL PHELPS THANKS A-ROD
The Olympic hero’s marijuana photo is no longer the top sports story. Although we’re guessing that another record-setting Olympic swimmer is gloating over his misfortune.
MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE
Questions to ponder while Ryan Howard’s new contract drives up the long-range earning power of Albert Pujols:
- Will Madonna dump A-Rod now that his positive test game to light?
- Will Mizzou fans get that old feeling back tonight when KU comes calling in Columbia?
- How could the Gridbirds fire defensive coordinator Clancy Pendergast after their Super Bowl run?
- Wasn’t that team’s defensive improvement critical to its unlikely playoff run?
RYAN LEAF COULD RELATE
The San Diego Union-Tribune offered this update about a draft pick gone horribly wrong:
“Matt Bush’s days as a Padre are over. And they ended in much the same way they began – with a controversial incident that involves the police.
“The Padres designated Bush for assignment yesterday, just as El Cajon police were looking into allegations he was involved in a drunken assault Wednesday involving boys lacrosse players on the Granite Hills High campus.
“It marks the third time since the Padres selected him No. 1 overall in the 2004 amateur draft that the former Mission Bay High standout has faced accusations stemming from an altercation.”
Drunken assault involving lacrosse players? That is a new way to end a career.
And to think that San Diego passed on Stephen Drew to take this guy. Ouch.
SPEAKING OF DOGS
It’s time for the Westminster Dog Show to move to center stage. One of Tipsheet’s favorite cynics was there.
AND NOW, A HAPPY STORY
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Patrick Thibodeau, a senior at Greely High in Cumberland Center, Maine, has been manager of the basketball team. Despite having Down’s Syndrome, he has also practiced with the team and played summer ball with the guys.
But he never played a regulation high school game until senior night, when his hard work was rewarded with a starting assignment.
Not only did he play, but stayed in the game until he knocked down a three-pointer. And then he came back at the end of the game for an encore.
His father, who suffered a stroke two weeks earlier, was released from the hospital just in time to see the game. The cool part of all this is the reaction of the crowd and the kid’s teammates.
MEGAPHONE
“I don’t know right now. Again, when I have a feeling one way or the other, I’ll let everyone else know. I don’t have a time frame. This is the first time right now that I am done having to think about football for a while, and I’m going to enjoy that part of it, enjoy my wife, enjoy my kids and then we’ll make a decision as soon as we can.”
Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner, talking at the Pro Bowl.
Great, now we get to see Jose Canseco parade around the U.S. waving his finger and screaming, “I told you so!” Thanks a lot A-Roid!
To Mike Vaccaro of the NY Post: The steriod era unfortunately, is longer than 15 years. I’m 27 and I can remember back in the late 80’s as a kid having the discussion with my older brother. Everyone seems to forget that this didn’t just happen in the 90’s, that’s just when it exploded. Anyone remember Lyle Alzedo (sorry for if it’s mis-spelled). It was about that time they started testing in the NFL and the ‘Bash’ bros. started smashing balls into the Bay. Is SF the PED capitol of the world?
I am comfortable with letting “Big Game” become a salary cap casualty.
Pretty sad when the person with the most credibility in MLB is Jose Canseco. As more time passes he continues to be proven 100% accurate. It will be interesting to see if A-Rod chooses to talk or not.
Note to TLR: you haven’t had much success in changing player positions in the past (see Chris Duncan). Leave Skip in the outfield and stop trying to prove how smart you are. Everyone knows that in 99% of the cases, you don’t change positions at the Major League level – it just doesn’t work.
Give the Blues credit, they continue to grind it out every night and now with some steady goaltending are starting to get some results. Manny got what he deserved – shut up and play better and the contract/money will take care of itself.
That sound you heard this weekend was the door to the HOF slamming in A-Roid’s face…
Blues won again Saturday. They really have started putting a serious run together. They have won a few in a row before this year, but a game like the Edmonton one would have killed that. Maybe they are starting to find it. And thanks Manny for your time and effort here in St Louis. Instead of bitching, go down to Peoria and stop some pucks and earn a trip back.
The central skill in playing baseball, whether hitting/fielding/pitching, is hand-eye coordination. Not one study has ever shown that steroids has any beneficial effect on this ability. The increase in offense during the 1990’s seems to be solely attributed to steroid use while completely ignoring the construction of smaller ballparks with less foul territory, the tiny strike zones called by the umps, advanced bat technology (thinner handles and heavier shafts), juicing of the balls, and expansion of a number of new teams. Expansion which put a lot of AAA pitchers in the Majors overnight likely had a significant effect. Maris hit 61 hrs in 1961, the first ever expansion year(look at his 1960-61-62 hr numbers and compare them to Brady Anderson’s 1995-96-97 hrs). The poster boy for steroid use is Jose Canseco. Jose has an identical twin, Ozzie. Scientifically, the same chemicals acting on the exact same DNA should give reasonably similar results. Yet Jose had a career on the fringes of the HoF while Ozzie had a career on the fringes of the Major Leagues.
It is said that sports greats from different era’s cannot be compared. If everyone who was hitting alot of homers was doing steroids during that era, then what does it matter? Quit talking about it and move on.
Go Mizzou! Great win by the Bills yesterday.
say what you will about Jose Canseco…with every new, positive test his words are validated even more…..
Kenn, steroids don’t do squat for hand-eye, but they do build muscle. And simple Newtonian physics tells you that if you can swing a bat faster because you are stronger, then the ball will go farther. It’s about bat speed. How many balls to guys hit to the base of the wall in a season? Add even 1 mph more on your swing and that ball is gone. You points about strike zone and the rest are perfectly valid and have impacted the homer rate in the game. But so as steroids.
Tim-You’re right that steroid use can have an increase in stats, but my point is that it is probably negligible. Say two 200 lb guys hit the gym to build themselves up and one uses steroids which allows him to work out a bit longer and heal a little faster. After 4-5 months, how much bigger will the steroid user be? 5 lbs, 6 lbs? Who knows? Certainly not 20 or 30 lbs. Now, what increase in bat speed will the extra 5-6 lbs give him? Again, no one has to my knowledge tried to measure it, but I’d think it would in one-thousands of a mile/hr rather than whole mph’s. About half of the players detected using steroids have been pitchers. If steroids are the main reason for the hr record, why haven’t some pitchers struck out 400 in a season; why aren’t guys stealing 150-200 bases/year. When steroid assisted Ben Johnson won the 100 meter race in the Olympics, how much faster was he than Carl Lewis? Negligably.
Kenn, he beat Carl Lewis though, didn’t he? That is the difference between winning and losing at the highest level of competition. Baseball is truly a game of inches, and it doesn’t take much to get that edge. What’s the line from a baseball movie (Bull Durham?) that it only takes one bloop hit or seeing-eye grounder a week to go from .250 to .300?
Don’t get me wrong, your point is well made and valid. But an extra home run or two a month, or 4 strikeouts a month, makes a big difference over the course of a baseball season. Being stronger and able to resist the wear and tear of the season can have huge implications on contracts and productability.