A-ROD...FROM HERO TO ZERO? - by MiracleMets Articles / Date: Feb 17, 2009 - 09:19 PM OK, so it looks like we finally have a brand new Baseball Public Enemy #1. Out with the old - Barry Bonds - and in with the new - Alex Rodriguez. But before I even mention ‘A-RodGate’, the only reason I've always defended Barry Bonds and his record as a hitter, is that we do actually have a Constitution and a presumption of innocence in order to defend even rich and priviledged people like Bonds, it’s actually basic 1st year law school 101 - ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat (the burden of proof rests on who asserts, not on who denies) So let’s just say that in a hypothetical The People vs. Barry Bonds case, for the defence I have 756 home runs as exhibits of (so far) untainted evidence which support my belief that Bonds is/was the greatest slugger of all time. Nobody has ever proven that even one of those home runs was ever hit whisly Bonds was under the influence of PEDs, right? If not, then show me which one(S) it was exactly, where and when did it happen ? The prosecution on the other hand - made up largely of a nationwide internet/media kangaroo-court of countless Bond detractors - have a few items of purely circumstantial evidence and hearsay, namely stemming from BALCO which we know descended into a pantomime of plea-bargaining and ‘own-ass-covering’ like some endless episode of ‘Law and Order, but also from that ‘Game of Shadows’ book, which apart from being incredibly badly written, would in itself be inadmissible on at least two counts because a) it quotes widely from supposedly secret grand jury testimony, which is a huge ‘no-no’, and b) the author refuses to even reveal any of his sources for any of his allegations. So any judge would just throw the book out along with the rest of the garbage. And I suppose for the wider ‘RoidsGate’ prosecution there would also have to be a few references to the infamous ‘Juiced’ book by that fine upstanding pillar of the baseballing community, Jose Canseco (yeah, that’s the very same drug-smuggling, bar-room brawling, allegedly wife-beating Jose Canseco) which doesn’t actually mention Bonds at all, but instead just reads like some dirt-digging tell-all expose of orgies at The Playboy Mansion compiled by the seedy little guy whose job it is to fish all the celebrities condoms out of the pool every morning. Bonds may one day soon go down on perjury and obstruction of justice charges, which if proven would also perhaps (though even then not definitively) take care of the whole business about whether or not he ever knowingly did PED’s. And that would actually be just fine with me if he did go down for that, at least in the USA any time you lie under oath counts as a very, very bad day at the office indeed, and it usually gets you some pretty serious jail time. Bond’s trial starts in a couple of weeks btw, March 2, I can’t speak for the rest of you guys but I’m quite happy to stand by the verdict. If he goes down, then people like me will look like an idiot for giving him the benefit of the doubt (but I'm quite OK with that), but if on the other hand he's cleared, then somebody needs to explain to the guy who scribbled a big * on the Bonds 756 home run ball, that he's a moron for defacing a unique historical baseball artefact based on hearsay and conjecture, and for believing all the hype. Things have moved on quite a bit in the A-Rod story. A-Rod’s confession to Peter Gammons on ESPN last week that he took steroids between 2001- 2003 has hurts him a whole lot, it probably won’t destroy his career, but he's admitted to possibly 3 straight seasons of doping, presumably in order to try and gain an edge as he also admitted, which makes him something of a junkie and a very serious steroids user at the time. Sounds like he was so out of control with the juice that he couldn't even tell Gammons what kinds of drugs he took, according to him he was taking stuff without even knowing what it was. So unlike Bonds - who has never once in his life failed a drugs test - it’s now a matter of record that A-Rod tested positive for PEDs, and he admits he did a hell of a lot of dope for maybe 2 or 3 years. We don’t know how this will affect him in the long run, if at all. Like Bonds, A-Rod we all know is not a very well liked guy amongst many ordinary fans anyway, he already gets booed loudly by just about everyone in the ballpark whenever he steps up to the plate away from Yankee Stadium as it is, so he’s pretty used to it, and at least for this year he won’t really know if he’s getting booed simply because he admits he did a ton of steroids, or just because people already hate him for a whole bunch of other reasons. I’m not denying that doing PED’s makes you – at best – someone who is clearly looking to 'cheat' any which way you can, and a person with very little integrity or respect for the traditions of the game. But that applies to anyone who juiced, not just A-Rod. But more to the point neither am I convinced that taking these controversial PEDs actually makes you hit more home runs or increase your power as a hitter, mainly because nobody has ever proved that a guy who hits a baseball whilst on ‘roids, would not have also hit the same ball just as far if he’d been clean when he did it. For a start the physics of hitting a baseball simply don't work like that at all. 7 or even 8 times out of 10 you most likely won't even hit the damn thing at all, and it won't matter how hard you swing at it or what junk you're on. And as far as Bonds is concerned, in the absence of an A-Rod type confession you obviously can’t test for these things retrospectively, and even if you could it would still be inconclusive, all you can ever do is speculate that it may possibly have helped based purely on the drug’s known chemical properties. But also you may even just be naive and gullible, and because you’re a wealthy and ambitious baseball star some guy is trying to rip you off by convincing you that doing these steroids will inflate your stats and thereby increase your value on the market. But there is however a ton of statistical evidence which anyone can pull up which suggests that PED’s don’t suddenly turn you into Hank Aaron Mark II. For example, serial steroids junkie Larry Bigbie openly admits he took mountains of PED’s for 5 straight seasons between 2001 and 2005, but during that whole time he hit .267.... and with a total of 31 home runs, that’s like an average of 6 home runs a year, which being ‘steroids assisted’ numbers all suggests that Bigbie was either a) a far worse hitter even than we thought he was at the time, or b) the poor schmuck was actually buying vitamin C at $100 a shot in the belief that he was being sold testosterone. And how about Jeremy Giambi (Jason’s brother) who became something of a poster boy for all these chemicals. He admits that he doped up for a few years, but these PED’s made such a difference to his performance that he turned into such a lousy 3rd rate hitter he ended up getting cut by the Red Sox at the age of only 29, and he never played in the majors again. And there are plenty more known 'roiders with the exact same story... if you're taking something which is theoretically 'performance-enhancing', but it doesn't seem to matter how much you take of it over a period of time, it still doesn't 'enhance your performance', then where's the harm in it anyway? If you really want to infest your body with chemicals for years, and for your trouble it lifts your career BA from .215 to .230, then go right ahead idiot, who exactly has the last laugh, the deluded player - or his getting rich quick supplier? I’m no chemist, but if anyone is saying that steroids=home runs in order to discredit hitters like Bonds or A-Rod and others, then logically you can’t just leave it at that, you also need to explain why it is then that many proven or self-confessed steroids users gained absolutely zero benefit from the use of these same sorts of PEDs. So steroids only work for some guys, and not for others then, so how exactly does that work? Well OK, what do I know about pharmaceuticals, I guess anything is possible with drugs. But on that dubious basis then, are we saying that only alleged ‘roiders who happen to hit well and who put up great career numbers should get toasted by the baseball public, who then wave placards of syringes at them from the bleachers for the rest of their careers, because everybody loves it when a doped-up superstar gets knocked off his pedestal... whilst on the other hand all the other ‘roiders whose numbers continued to suck even when they're taking the junk, they should just get a free ride. So why is that? Well, because fella if you’re on the juice but you're still only hitting like .198, and most at-bats you can barely even lift the baseball over the second-base guy’s head, then you’re a loser, and we're not interested, and you can inject Gatorade energy drinks into your veins for all we care, it clearly won’t ever make you a better hitter whatever you take, and anyways there’s just no story here, because who the hell is going to buy a copy of Sports Illustrated on the basis that there's a big photo-shopped picture of ........now wait for it........LARRY BIGBIE with a needle hanging out of his arm right there on the front cover!!? The most annoying thing about the whole A-Rod thing is that more than almost any other player we've seen for many years, he doesn’t ever need to look for an edge, in fact he’s such a good player that if anything they should probably be spiking his drinks with something to make him worse. You have to be a phenomenal slugger to hit a baseball 400-500 feet 100’s of times in your career, and I don’t care if you’re Popeye the Sailorman living on a permanent diet of steroids and spinach, you simply won’t ever manage to do it without a great technique, great timing and hand/eye co-ordination, and a God given baseball instinct...none of which you’ll ever get from any drug ever invented. Talent doesn’t come in a vial that you can inject through a syringe. Isn't any 8 year old kid starting off in Little League taught this? So why didn't anybody explain that to A-Rod back in Texas? And that’s basically it. Looking around the web this past weekend, the reality of people’s perception of this whole thing is that sadly A-Rod’s career credentials are now pretty much flushed right down the toilet, and he's blown it big time. Bud Selig has issued the most scathing attack on any player that I ever saw from him when he released his statement on the A-Rod confession, accusing him of bringing shame to the game. Selig suggests that he's even leaving open the possibility of punishing A-Rod, but he can't possibly punish or suspend A-Rod. Petitte and Giambi and Sheffield and many others all admit they once did PED's too, so he'd have to punish them all right? How about the other 103 guys on the list? Yankees GM Brian Cashman won't even comit when asked if he believes A-Rod took anything after he joined the NYY, so there's another vote of confidence for him! Oh, and to cheer up Alex even more as if it were possible, Canseco even has a brand new literary epic out in the shops where he says he first introduced A-Rod to a dope dealer, and he even accuses A-Rod of trying it on with his wife (I’ve not read the latest ‘Baseballing Gospel According to St Jose’ so I’m not even sure if that’s his first wife that Canseco allegedly beat up that he’s referring to, or his second wife that he also allegedly beat up?) But it’s pretty hard to find anything at all positive to say in A-Rod’s favour right now, even his confession is totally meaningless, because we all know that he only confessed because he was outed, let’s be honest he wasn’t about to call up Peter Gammons on his cell and say “listen Peter, guess what, I did steroids for 3 years down in Texas” unless this story had broken first. Confession only sounds sincere if you come clean before you're busted, and not after you're outed 8 years after you started shooting-up by Sports Illustrated. A-Rod to the HoF? Won't happen, not ever. None of the other known high profile steroids 'suspects' with HoF type numbers like McGwire, Clemens, Sosa, Palmeiro and the rest will ever make it into the Hall of Fame, though like I already said in the absence of any hard evidence I would never myself condemn anyone based purely on allegations and hearsay. Bonds isn't the only player condemned on uncorroborated evidence and speculation. But a guy like A-Rod, who now admits he took PED’s for up to 3 years, and there’s even at least one positive test result which proves beyond doubt that he did, he's done with the HOF gang. Which sort of sucks really, because although he’s a Yankee and I love it when really horrible things happen to that club, A-Rod’s swing is a thing of almost unique beauty, he's such a gifted athlete. Though A-Rod IMO probably should be thinking to himself...actually, do I really want to belong to an institution where 5% of them just voted aganst living legend Ricky Henderson being inducted?! I think The Hall of Fame has no option but to be totally consistent over how they treat high profile slugger suspects from the ‘steroids era’, and the fact that THE one time home-run king and one time HOF shoe-in Mark McGwire is getting less support on the ballot each year than even some guy like Tim Raines, it means that McGwire is never getting in. And if a hitter like Big Mac doesn't make it, then none of them ever will. He's the acid-test, and the HoF are pretty much ignoring him (he's only getting around 20% of votes, when he actually needs 70%) I still think all of this is in many ways irrelevant to my own perception of A-Rod as a phenomenal hitter going into 2009, unless that is somebody can convince me that A-Rod still hits it out of the park 40-50 times, and he still drives in 120-130 runs every year, and that’s all due to the fact that he admits he took testosterone and steroids way back in 2001-2003. Though quite why a guy who even back then was already going to be making $250million, and was widely regarded as maybe the most talented player in the game, ever gets himself into this sort of fix at all, well, it’s just pretty sad actually. The endgame to all this is ..the A-Rod steroids confession/leaked test results, plus the upcoming Bonds perjury trial in March, which could last weeks or even months, are probably about to dominate the news in baseball in 2009. I just hope it won’t dominate this forum all year too. But hey, it’s no use us complaining about it even if it does, because it’s big news. Scandal, and celebrity culture, and drugs, and court trials, and people cheating on their team-mates/or their wives or whatever, it’s all that many people ever want to hear and read about and talk about. Some guy going 5 for 5 with a home run and a triple doesn’t make people rush home and turn on their TVs, or argue about it all night in the bar/pub, or even write some lurid trashy sports-scandal book in order to help meet his huge double-alimony payments. 'MiracleMets' This article comes from UK MLB Supporters Club http://www.baseballfan.co.uk/ The URL for this story is: http://www.baseballfan.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=302