These are the restless, uncomfortable days, waiting, waiting, waiting. There are a lot of ways in which sports are unique to our society, and we are reminded of that as we sit along with Alex Rodriguez and his army of flacks, hacks and yes-men, waiting to see Bud Selig and his band of Untouchables swing their gavel.
This is one: only in sports does such a thing as a non-criminal trial exist in the public mind on the same level of intrigue as a criminal trial.
Look, whatever Rodriguez did or didn’t do, it isn’t anywhere close to the equivalent of what Aaron Hernandez did or didn’t do, what Rae Carruth did, what O.J. Simpson may or may not have done. Those things happen in the same realm as everyone else who is expected to abide by the law.
But sports has its own penal codes, and because sports commands such an enormous chunk of the national attention span, its scandals can feel like a Best-of-Court-TV highlight reel. Rodriguez is just the latest example of that, riding shotgun with past characters that include Pete Rose, Paul Hornung, Alex Karras, and various members of championship Chicago White Sox and CCNY Beavers.
In a simpler time, the worst part of coming face-to-face with a sporting transgression was having to make a telephone call to Vince Lombardi, the most renowned disciplinarian in the history of organized sport. That’s what Hornung had to do on April 17, 1963, the day Pete Rozelle informed him that he (along with Karras) would be suspended from the NFL a full year for gambling on their teams (mostly small-time bets, too; the biggest sum was around $800) to win.
“Think about making that call,” Hornung said.
Lombardi, rather famously, didn’t explode. His first reaction was a fatherly one: “You should have told me. I could have rectified it.” And his second was almost as a surrogate Father Confessor, according to the Lombardi biography “When Pride Still Mattered”: “You stay at the foot of the cross. I don’t want to see you go to the racetrack. I don’t want to hear about you doing anything. Keep your nose clean, and I’ll do my best to get you back. But, mister, stay at the foot of the cross.”
One other thing that should be noted: Hornung came back after his one-year ban, played on two more championship Packers teams, and ultimately discovered that his transgression wasn’t held against him when it came time for electors to determine his fitness for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It may have helped that Hornung never wasted anyone’s time trying to deny what he’d done.
“I lived with it, dealt with it, and moved on,” he said.
That, ultimately, is what all the guilty parties of sports jurisprudence must do. Rose has done it in any manner you can think of since 1989: publicly, privately, with defiance and with contrition. Shoeless Joe Jackson never made the public campaigns for forgiveness Rose has, he simply kept playing under assumed names well into his 40s while other teammates – notably Buck Weaver – pushed relentlessly (and fruitlessly) to get their good names back.
Many years ago I sat with Al Roth in his office at ArZee Supply in Mahwah, N.J., and saw first-hand that the mistakes you make in pursuit of athletic glory don’t have to define (or shackle) you. Fifty years before, Roth and his fellow teammates at CCNY had been part of he most famous point-shaving scheme in sports history.
Their sporting careers ended in disgrace. But many of them had gone on to prosperous lives even after their names were splashed all over the papers and the NBA slammed its doors on all of them. Roth, like his teammates, like Hornung, like Karras, like Rose (however reluctantly) took ownership of what he’d done.
“We were young,” he said. “We made mistakes. Some of us still live in those days, and some are still as bitter now as when it happened. But some of us moved on, because that’s the only thing you can do. That’s the only way you stay sane. You realize it’s all God’s will, and you get going with your life.”
Maybe Rodriguez really is as innocent as his mouthpieces insist. But if MLB’s case is as airtight as it believes, there will be the small matter of the 50 or so years to come after this most public humbling and humiliation. If his career is imperiled, his life is not. If it turns out he violated a public trust, it won’t be the same as shattering the law. There is another chapter coming, and it’s on him to write it.
It’s something he’ll need to think long and hard about. If he hasn’t already.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com