New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/
February 10, 2009
Alex Rodriguez gave us more than you thought he would when he admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs, a lot more than any big baseball star ever has. Rodriguez gave us his version of the truth. But that's all it was, his version, and one only provided because he finally got caught.Rodriguez says he was only dirty when he played in Texas but cleaner than corners on a hospital bed when he was in Seattle before that, and later when he got to New York.
We are supposed to accept all that as gospel because he has made this kind of television confession now. Or maybe he just expects us to believe him because he has always been such a good scout.
Roger Clemens gave us one kind of show when he was accused of being a steroids user. Rodriguez saw how well that has worked out for Clemens. So this was a different kind of show, Rodriguez almost begging people to feel sorry for him and like him even while admitting to doing something - using steroids - that most baseball fans hate.
And while he couldn't tell you what drugs he took, he sure was clear on when he took them.
"I was young, I was stupid, I was naive," Rodriguez said to Peter Gammons on ESPN. "I wanted to prove to everybody that I was worthy of being one of the greatest players of all time."
He says he was young, stupid, naive. The fact of the matter is that he took the drugs for the same reason they all took them - to get bigger and stronger and better. In that way he is no better than Barry Bonds or any other drug cheat.
"I felt a tremendous need to keep up," he says, explaining why he first started using these drugs, even though he was coming off a career in Seattle that had earned him an insane $252million contract in Texas.
Bonds still maintains he thought he was using flaxseed oil. At least Rodriguez, who still thinks he can hit more home runs than anybody, said he did it Monday. And you have to give him that.
But on a day he kept talking about honesty again and again and about the truth setting him free, he also kept acting as if the hard-core, injectable steroids he is accused of taking were something that you could run down to the health-food store and buy over the counter.
He kept talking about GNC as if that's where you could pick up testosterone and Primobolan along with Vitamin C. That version of things wouldn't fly on "Judge Judy."
And on a day when he tried to get as much sympathy for himself, he veered off into an attack on the Sports Illustrated writer, Selena Roberts, who broke the story and made her out to be some kind of sick, twisted stalker instead of a reporter doing her job.
To the end, you have to shake your head with this guy. Because only A-Rod, on a day when he made this kind of confession, could also try to sell you this:
I took the drugs to make myself even better than I already was ... and then discovered that I am even greater without them!
"I've played the best baseball of my career since," he said.
When Gammons asked him exactly what he was taking, Rodriguez wasn't entirely sure. He wants us to believe that nobody ever told him he had tested positive for two different steroids in 2003. And if you believe somebody from the players' union didn't mention that to Rodriguez, you believe water really isn't wet.
But this is A-Rod, after all. Naturally you come away with more questions than the ones he answered. And as for lying to Katie Couric when she asked him on "60 Minutes" about using steroids, he gave an answer right out of crisis management school, one about how if he couldn't tell the truth to himself, how could he tell the truth to Couric?
This was just the latest example of the old dodge from the fight promoter Bob Arum, the one about how Monday he was lying and today he's telling the truth.
Just because Rodriguez copped to just enough - the way Andy Pettitte did one year ago - does that mean he told us everything? Or did Rodriguez do just enough to get people to feel sorry for him, the way Pettitte did when spring training '08 started? They tell you what they did was wrong, wrong, wrong and then act as if we're supposed to carry them around the room on our shoulders.
We are all supposed to believe Rodriguez when he says he stopped cold turkey in 2003, that he hasn't just replaced steroids with human growth hormone.
We are really supposed to believe he was using these drugs and got tested along with everybody else six years ago and never wondered whether there was a dirty test on him.
Rodriguez stepped to the plate Monday in a way a lot of us thought he never would. Bonds never admitted to knowingly using baseball drugs, Roger Clemens hasn't, Mark McGwire wouldn't, even in front of Congress. A-Rod did. It was some show. But as always with him, you wonder how much of it was real.
And knowing what's still real in baseball - isn't that what this is supposed to be all about?
Jeter forced to start A-new following A-Rod's admission
By Filip Bondy
New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/
February 10, 2009
Egan-Chin/News
Derek Jeter speaks in Tampa on Monday.
Derek Jeter was in Tampa on Monday working out, getting ready for baseball. You remember baseball: Small, white spheroid. Leather gloves. Flimsy wooden bats.
It is a sport that Jeter still loves, that makes him smile in the dugout whenever a teammate smacks a double in the gap or Chien-Ming Wang says something wacky. You ask Jeter a question about real life, you'll likely get one curt, evasive sentence. You ask him about baseball, his face lights up and he'll talk both your ears off. Have you ever noticed how Jeter looks back, tracking a taken pitch all the way into the catcher's mitt? He milks every second from this game.
Nobody was going to ask Jeter about taking pitches Monday, however, because Alex Rodriguez had already stolen early spring, bundling it up in giant steroid headlines. Reporters wanted to know about A-Rod. They always want to know about A-Rod.
"My initial reaction is to wait until Alex talks," Jeter said before Rodriguez pleaded guilty on ESPN, with an explanation (things were "loosey-goosey"). "Give him the benefit of the doubt. Give him that respect."
Well of course that was what he was going to say. Jeter is the last of the great Yankees, at least the way we wish to envision and mythologize our Yankees. In reality, great Yankees have often been boozers (Ruth and Mantle) or egomaniacs (Reggie and A-Rod). Now it turns out a couple of them also have been drug cheats, which is not a phrase we'll ever hear during broadcasts on "Yankee Classics."
But Jeter is Jeter, the embodiment of those selfless championship years of the late 1990s. If we were to find out something bad about Derek, something about drugs, baseball would be done around here. They could stick a fork in it.
It's not done yet, because Rodriguez was on that 2003 steroid list, not Jeter. Nothing that Rodriguez says or does surprises anybody. He could be dating Britney Spears, or be point man for Bernie Madoff. We would just shake our heads and say, "That's A-Rod." He's a lot like Clemens in that way, only with more self-doubt and less mania.
We think of A-Rod, we think of Madonna, failed Octobers and now steroids. We hear Jeter's name, we think of a shovel pass at home plate to nail Jeremy Giambi, or a diving, horizontal catch into the stands in foul territory. We think about line-drive singles and four titles.
Reporters in Tampa had to ask him, though. They had to ask Jeter if he was concerned that his own name might be among the 104 who tested positive in 2003.
"Why would I worry about me being on that list?" he said Monday.
That was the answer we wanted to hear. Jeter is the guy who stays out of trouble, doesn't go trawling for it. He remains single, so his romantic dalliances amuse instead of disgust us. He keeps quiet about the contract that expires in 2010, about his place in the lineup, about the pitchers and teammates and coaches who have failed him in recent seasons.
There is no reason to suspect Jeter did steroids. His stats are in order. He never hit more than 24 homers in a season. In recent years, as he has aged, Jeter's home run totals have slowly decreased from 23 to 19 to 14 to 12 and then to 11. When analysts grump about his power numbers, they probably should be celebrating the natural erosion of muscle.
Sometimes, in the past, the silent treatment Jeter gave Rodriguez seemed almost harsh and hurtful. But then the more we get to know Rodriguez, the more we understand Jeter's cold shoulder. It isn't jealousy. It's self-preservation. He has to play shortstop next to this walking disaster area, and then he is expected to answer those endless questions.
Will Jeter stand up for Rodriguez, now that A-Rod admits to using the stuff? Jeter was the good teammate for Andy Pettitte. It will be harder to play that role with Rodriguez, for both personal and professional reasons.
It was during those years of A-Rod's admitted use, from 2001-2003, when he surpassed Jeter in the public's eye as the No. 1 shortstop in baseball. Now it turns out Jeter was surpassed not by a man, but by a drug.
"It would be nice to talk about baseball," Jeter said Monday.
He picked the wrong team for that, and then the team picked the wrong teammate.
fjbondy@netscape.net
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