MLB

Chicago, home to Shoeless Joe, fitting city for A-Rod circus

CHICAGO – The courthouse sits 5 ½ miles away from U.S. Cellular Field, in the heart of Cubs country. There, almost 92 years ago, eight members of the Chicago White Sox were acquitted of attempting to throw the 1919 World Series, a thorough victory of lawyers and public relations and due process.

And a resounding defeat for the eight baseball players, as it turned out.

It was on the steps of that courthouse that, according to legend, a young boy is said to have gotten the attention of Shoeless Joe Jackson, the most famous of the Eight Men Out.

“Say it ain’t so, Joe,” the boy’s voice echoes out across the decades. “Say it ain’t so.”

Ninety-two years after that exchange, 50 or so blocks south of those steps, baseball is right back in the muck, so maybe it is appropriate that by the time Alex Rodriguez found the baseball season, by the time baseball justice caught up to Rodriguez (for the time being, anyway), it was here, in Chicago, home of broad shoulders and a deep history for loose interpretation of good and bad, right and wrong, legal and illegal.

It was here, at almost exactly 2 o’clock in the afternoon, Central Time, that the verdict of Bud Selig and his deputies, was felt the longest and the loudest.

Thirteen men out this time.

Well, technically, 12 who accepted the sentences handed down by major league baseball, who took their 50-game bans and will now disappear into the ether, some of them (Nelson Cruz, Jhonny Peralta) departing pennant races, some of them (Francisco Cervelli, Jordanny Valdespin, Fernando Martinez, Jesus Montero) more than a little familiar to New York baseball fans, all of them facing a future in baseball forever to be tailed by taint and asterisks and suspicion.

And one other. That would be Alex Rodriguez, whom Selig slapped with a 211-game ban due to “use and possession of numerous forms of prohibited performance-enhancing substances, including testosterone and human growth hormone, over the course of multiple years,” he said in a statement.

He continued: “Rodriguez’s discipline under the Basic Agreement is for attempting to cover-up his violations of the program by engaging in a course of conduct intended to obstruct and frustrate the Office of the Commissioner’s investigation.”

Rodriguez, of course, will appeal, an appeal that becomes official on Thursday, and then for as many as the next 45 days (20 for the appeal to be heard, 25 for the arbiter, Fredric Horowitz, to render a decision) Rodriguez will attempt to put the pieces back in his broken career and his fractured legacy, will try to limit the distractions his mere presence brings to a team fighting for its post-season life even as he insists it is that very presence that allows those playoff aspirations to remain alive.

The MLB Players Association backed A-Rod soon after, and the Yankees defended themselves against any improprieties, and roughly five hours after receiving the longest non-lifetime ban ever handed down, A-Rod was scheduled to make his season debut for the Yankees. Day 1 of what could be a 48-day circus.

It’s so, kids. It’s so.

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com