Let’s lowball our guess on how much Alex Rodriguez spent the last year to defend himself against the Biogenesis allegations. Let’s say $5 million.
Now, what if he had taken that $5 million a year ago — right after the Miami New Times reported of his connection to Biogenesis — and handed it to his “nutritionist” Anthony Bosch with the simple instructions: “Disappear. Go to Belize and don’t come back”?
Think of how different the baseball universe would be now, with spring training 2014 upon us. Bosch’s name would be a faded memory, his existence a painful reminder of the Major League Baseball drug testing program’s limits.
Ryan Braun and Aaron Rodgers still would be buddies and business partners. Jordany Valdespin, having forged a terrific relationship with Terry Collins, would be slated as the Mets’ leadoff hitter and center fielder.
All right, maybe the Valdespin scenario is a stretch.
Rodriguez, innocent until proven guilty, would be preparing for his 11th season as a Yankee, and a phalanx of defense attorneys, investigators and public-relations advisers would be $5 million (or more, very likely) poorer.
Good ole hindsight. The truth is, a year ago, many of us — myself very much included — thought Rodriguez, Braun, Bosch and company would skate their way past MLB investigators. Kudos to MLB for outmaneuvering the Biogenesis Bunch at every turn and banishing their top target, A-Rod, for the entire 2014 season, putting his career in serious jeopardy. The latest MLB victory came Friday, when Rodriguez dropped his two ill-conceived lawsuits against MLB and the Players Association.
Now that we covered what Rodriguez should have done, let’s look ahead and suggest what he should do next, since he clearly wants to get back on the field for the 2015 Yankees and re-establish peace with MLB:
Rodriguez needs to confess his guilt.
He must own up to both using illegal performance-enhancing drugs with Bosch from 2010-12 and obstructing MLB’s investigation in 2013.
He needs to exhibit a skill at which he has historically been terrible: Apologizing.
This time, at least, he has a better story to sell.
It would be wonderful if our culture just accepted verdicts as the final say on the matter. If we could not get so personally invested in such sagas, to sit back, enjoy their hilarity then move forward.
Fredric Horowitz’s actions should speak louder than any of Rodriguez’s words. Just as Roger Clemens’ epic beatdown of the United States government’s legal system should trump whatever suspicions surround him.
That’s not who we are, though. We demand penance. We love words. We love contrition most of all.
Rodriguez owns a colossal trust deficit. He fared poorly during his initial illegal PED apology tour in 2009. He memorably asked “the American people” to “judge me from this day forward.” And now there’s a mountain of validated evidence that displays he dove back into this habit less than two years later — MLB thinks, but hasn’t proven, Rodriguez used the drugs in 2009 with disgraced Canadian doctor Anthony Galea.
Furthermore, A-Rod’s scorched-Earth strategy of the past year proved successful in one sense: Holy cow, did he create ill will. He made serious enemies up and down the baseball industry. A single phone call to MLB COO Rob Manfred, which occurred this past week, doesn’t represent even a first step in the process.
So after he apologizes personally to the many, many folks he insulted, deceived and disturbed, Rodriguez should play up his narrative to the fans.
This isn’t Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong or A-Rod Version 1.0. In those cases, an athlete attained greatness with the help of illegal means. Rodriguez was anything but great during his substantiated period of usage. He worked with Bosch from 2010-12, and his OPS dropped each season.
We all saw it with our own eyes: Rodriguez was in heavy decline. In theory, he would have been even worse without Bosch’s assistance.
Remember Rodriguez’s brutal 2012 postseason? It turned out he was seriously injured, which is the basis of his one remaining lawsuit (medical malpractice against Yankees team physician Christopher Ahmad). Fans were livid with Rodriguez about his woeful performance (well, that and his hitting on two female fans during Game 1 of the American League Championship Series).
So what did A-Rod do? On his own dime, he flew Bosch to Detroit to try to improve. Bosch told Horowitz he gave Rodriguez HGH and peptides. And A-Rod didn’t even start either of the two ALCS games in Detroit. He went through all that for two late at-bats during a Game 4 blowout loss.
Yup, he broke the rules and got caught and deserves his punishment. Surely we can relate to his thinking, though. He wanted to avoid further embarrassment.
Rodriguez appears poised to put the “time heals all wounds” cliché to its greatest test yet. There’s a good chance the Yankees will release him in 2015 no matter how many apologies he provides, no matter how poorly the team’s third basemen play in 2014.
All we know for sure, however, is this: A year ago, A-Rod understandably overestimated his chances of surviving a crisis. He shouldn’t be as confident this time.