Boil everything else down. Let all the nonsense fall away, put on noise-reducing headphones and focus simply on what matters when it comes to Alex Rodriguez.
Here is what matters:
When the time came to tell the truth, under oath, for real, he decided to punt.
Twice.
All along, Rodriguez yearned for a moment to tell us his side of the story. All along, he railed about the process of arbitration, about vendettas and witch-hunts and selective prosecution and unrelenting persecution. All along, he told us he looked forward to his hour on a witness stand, when we would see how he had been wronged, how he had been hunted, how he had been haunted.
Just wait, he promised. You’ll see.
And now we’ll never see. We’ll never hear. Twice he had the opportunity to clear his throat, raise his right hand, tell us the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help him God.
The first time, in the worst bit of acting by an athlete since Joe Namath’s run ended in “Damn Yankees,” he stormed out of the arbitration hearing room, angered he wouldn’t be able to face MLB commissioner Bud Selig, even though under the rules of arbitration — rules he, as a union member had agreed to, rules that have heavily favored players for decades — Selig wasn’t compelled to testify.
“No fair!” A-Rod shouted, and he stomped his feet, and he went on the radio and started crying about missing his daughter’s birthday while trying to clear his name, and he tried to invoke the spirit of New York as he declared Selig had it in for the Big Apple, as if Rodriguez had suddenly become a more beloved New York icon than Grand Central Terminal.
“This,” he declared that day, “has been a disgusting process for everyone.”
It was a laughable display by both Rodriguez and his legal dream team, but if anything, his ardor that day promised a second opportunity, this time in a court of law, for him to again tell his side. Despite an army of experts saying it was unlikely a federal court would listen to his appeal once the arbitrator handed down his 162-game compromise suspension, you figured his lawyers had to believe there was at least a chance for A-Rod to take a witness stand and tell his side.
There had to be, right?
You don’t pay that many lawyers that much money to be given the dreadful advice of walking away from the arbitration hearing unless you’re going to fight another day, right?
And now it appears that day will never come.
Now it seems there will either be a tearful confession or a defiant declaration on Oprah’s couch someday, if any such day will ever come, and it will be every bit as empty as his cries of injustice were in the WFAN studios in November. You can say what you want, spin what you want, in those settings.
Under oath, you have to either tell the truth or be a sociopathic liar.
And in the end, what we have to believe is, that was the problem, after spending so much time and effort and money on his defense against MLB, it finally occurred to A-Rod the truth — or even his version of the truth, however subjective that surely would have been — wasn’t the kind of explanation he wanted to share with his hand on a Bible.
It’s the only conclusion to draw.
And it’s the only one we’re left with. Did A-Rod simply tire of throwing good money after bad? Maybe. Had he grown weary of the fight? Perhaps. Did he finally realize the folly of trying to find a federal judge as utterly egomaniacal as he is, one who would have ignored binding arbitration? Sure. That’s possible.
But he already had his chance. And already made his choice. He wanted us to believe he was standing up for something in November when he abandoned the arbitration hearing, when he forfeited his right to face his accuser (MLB, not the commissioner), when he was told it would be a good idea to test the public’s gullibility by choosing a radio studio over a witness stand.
He wasn’t standing up for anything. He was making one last run for it, trying to pull one last con on the public. We’d find out the truth in time, he swore, and in the end he was right. We did. The truth is, Rodriguez never had any interest in sharing the truth. Not under oath. Not when it counted. Not ever.