Alex Rodriguez has remained pugnacious, fighting MLB and the Yankees and anyone else he sees as the enemy in a way befitting a person with deep pockets and a deeper sense of victimization.
If he is innocent of taking illegal performance enhancers the past few years — as he has said in a few forums, but never under oath — then fight on he should.
But if he is guilty and all this has been an exercise in finding a loophole through which to escape, then he has made a mistake in overvaluing the advice of his lawyers and his own sense of float-through-all-crisis entitlement. And made a huge mistake in underestimating the capacity of the country and the sport for forgiveness — if you give those groups reasons to provide second or third chances.
Perhaps he was too immersed in his own case to notice, but the regular season ended with his now former teammate, Andy Pettitte, hailed into retirement despite his PED past.
Since the conclusion of the season, Matt Williams — he of the prominent spot in the Mitchell Report — has been hired as Nationals manager. Jason Giambi, once a BALCO All-Star, signed yet another minor league contract with the Indians, whom he serves as resident sage and manager in training.
Jhonny Peralta and Bartolo Colon, despite their naughty ties to the same Biogenesis scandal that has felled A-Rod, signed four- and two-year deals, respectively, as free agents. Carlos Ruiz and Marlon Byrd, also with PED-related suspensions in their recent pasts, signed three- and two-year free agent deals, respectively.
No one is ever completely forgiven. This all stays on the permanent record, soils the history of all touched by these actions. But the country and the sport both have short memories, a need to move on to the next matter without staying obsessed with the past — just look how quickly the A-Rod news, for example, wiped all of the enmity about the Hall of Fame voting from our frontal lobes.
Rodriguez himself should know what the value of contrition is. He used that tack when outed the first time with steroids in 2009. He did his mea culpa, behaved as much like a reasonable human being publicly as he is capable and generally had the fervor around him die down week by week, never disappearing, but diminishing to a tolerable level.
Such is the needy, greedy, seedy makeup of the man that given a second shot — a level of redemption — decided to try to reverse aging or chase 800 homers or whatever in a strip mall in Miami with a non-doctor named Anthony Bosch. We can argue whether MLB was overzealous or even unscrupulous in how it went about accumulating evidence and aligning itself with Bosch — and it is a discussion to continue about how far we want MLB to go to try to defang the use of performance enhancers in the game.
But A-Rod, who once denied even knowing Bosch, clearly was in cahoots with him, exchanged hundreds of text messages with — again — someone he claimed not to know, at one point, and was taking advice what to put in his body from someone with all the airs of a “Scarface” extra and, again, no medical degree and a strip-mall address. The evidence amassed by MLB made 13 other players accept suspension. It ultimately convinced an independent arbitrator named Fredric Horowitz — in a forum that has long been favorable to players — to ban Rodriguez for the 2014 season, and deliver a written finding that essentially endorses MLB’s every contention while finding A-Rod’s defense to be, at best, underwhelming and dubious.
So even if MLB’s behavior is unsettling, this case was about whether A-Rod took PEDs or not. And if the only evidence to the contrary is A-Rod’s paid mouthpieces claiming he is a victim of a conspiracy that makes Oliver Stone’s “JFK” seem simplistic, I will assume Rodriguez is a cheat and a serial liar about that cheating.
Yet, even with that, he has had his chances to get out ahead of this yet again. With an admission and cooperation, he probably gets a far shorter suspension and saves lawyers’ fees that have a gross national product feel to them. He also could have begun some reclamation that, while never cleansing him, at least begins the process of potentially making him a viable face around the sport.
If this offseason did not tell him the value of speedy acceptance and admittance, how about the lesson of Pete Rose, who denied, denied, denied until his tell-all a decade later and, well, how has that worked out for him? Or Lance Armstrong, who did the pugnacious legal thing, too, costing himself plenty of dough and whatever lingers of his reputation.
Look, maybe there is even still time for Rodriguez at this late date to try what seems so difficult for him — honesty, self-reflection, a more righteous course. It will not stop the suspension or the tarnish to his name. Maybe, however, he can still find out it is a forgiving country and a forgiving game — but first you have to give folks reasons to offer forgiveness.