Alex Rodriguez stated yesterday that will be speaking with federal investigators regarding Dr. Tony Galea, a doctor connected to HGH who has ties to A-Rod’s rehab doctor. Of course, this set off a firestorm among some Yankees columnists, despite the fact that Bud Selig has noted that he does not believe there in anything to worry about for the sport in reference to Dr. Galea. Of course, Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran will be speaking to investigators as well, but the NY media did not see an opportunity for sanctimony in regard to those players. Let’s look at the worst overreaction, from Ian O’Connor, who famously penned a column last spring advocating that the Yankees dump Alex Rodriguez:

So yes, technically, this is about someone else. It’s about Galea. It’s about a doctor who reportedly used HGH for years and yet still found his way into the inner sanctums of megastars the likes of Tiger Woods.

But no, realistically, this isn’t about someone else. It’s about Alex Rodriguez. It’s about a once-in-a-generation ballplayer who cheated the game, cheated the fans and cheated himself, and who now is discovering that even a World Series ring and ticker-tape parade can’t absolve him of his not-so-venial steroid sins.

Investigators want to know if Rodriguez went back to playing boli-ball.

You would be hard pressed to find a more hyperbolic bit of text than the one cited above. A number of players have been questioned, and more are likely to be approached. If A-Rod had wished, he could have refused to speak with the investigators. Instead, he is being open about his connection to Galea, and has stated on a number of occasions that he has nothing to do with this and will simply be discussing “someone else.” While it is possible that A-Rod comes out of this entire situation looking bad, we have absolutely zero evidence at this point by which to make any sort of determination.

O’Connor is simply taking the opportunity provided by a story that places HGH and A-Rod in the same paragraph to throw some more barbs at Alex. For O’Connor to try and turn this into another steroid frenzy about A-Rod when he is simply one of many players who have had some incidental contact with Galea is irresponsible. Of course, it is hard to expect much journalistic integrity from a scribe who allowed his anti-ARod column from last year to be removed from the internet due to its embarrassing lack of perspective.

This is the sober moral of the Alex Rodriguez story. His presumption of game-day innocence is much like a baseball hit way out of the park.

He’s never getting it back.

The same could be said of any modicum of respectability and credibility that O’Connor had after the A-Rod column fiasco of 2009. After this disaster, he’s never getting it back.

I have written about this topic a number of times, so I am just going to pull out what I wrote when A-Rod came clean and give it a bit of an update:

YesterdayToday we learned that A-Rod tested positive for anabolic steroids in 2003 Mark McGwire took steroids for the bulk of his career. Today Tonight, the media vultures are out, picking at the bones of the player that they had previously trumpeted as the great clean hope. Buster Olney Jon Heyman believes Alex McGwire to be tarnished forever, and luminaries such as John Kruk, Tom Verducci, and Bill Madden feel that he should never be allowed into the Hall of Fame. Once again, the sanctimonious media is telling the masses that we should be livid, shouting their righteous indignation from the rooftops over the fact that they were, gasp, lied to by another superstar.

The hand wringing in the media is designed to distract us from one simple fact that the Olney’s and Verducci’s of the world desperately want us to ignore. Those guys were in the Yankee clubhouse in the late 90’s all the time. They criticize GM’s for not knowing what was going on in terms of baseball’s drug culture, yet they spent more time around these players than anyone but the managers and trainers. How did they miss what was going on?

The answer is quite simple, and is so damning as to pretty much disqualify any moral haranguing that you read from any reporter who worked during that era. They did not miss it, they just chose to ignore it. Home runs were good for the game that they cover and love, and they did not want to be whistle blowers. Whistle blowers are left on the outside looking in at all the fun, and the media members loved being insiders, loved being in on the grand party that was major league baseball at the turn of the century. Why turn Mark McGwire in when it will cost you his trust and your access to other players? So they just turned the other way while the players flaunted their use. In 1998, when someone asked McGwire about the andro in his locker, the writers skewered him for digging into someone else’s business. Now those same writers applaud when one of their colleagues procures sealed evidence of a supposedly anonymous drug test. The double standard and disingenuous nature of their actions make their moral proclamations “in the defense of the game” seem ridiculous. Suddenly you find it vitally important to defend the game? Where was that moral imperative as the players were bulking up around you?

Hypocrisy is the name of the game when it comes to the steroid story. It has become difficult to read anything on the issue with a straight face, as writers have the audacity to suddenly decide that they are the protectors of the moral fabric of baseball after letting the issue stay untouched for many years. Ultimately, the writers are just as culpable in creating the steroids morass that has engulfed the sport as anyone else. They only took heed once players like Canseco and Caminiti forced the issue out into the open. They want McGwire to apologize their way, according to their script, for “duping” them for years, yet they were never actually duped at all. They closed their eyes, put their fingers in their ears, and cheered McGwire, while vilifying the writer who wrote the initial story about “andro.” Spare me the moral indignation from the sports writers. They are bemoaning the very situation that they helped create.

From Bill Plaschke:

Surely it would happen, right?

Surely, somebody will hold him accountable for a 50-game suspension for violating baseball’s drug policy?

Surely somebody would let him know that, because he has yet to offer any true remorse or explanation since his May 7 suspension, somebody was going to publicly wonder why?

He had appeared in two games at triple-A Albuquerque, where he was showered with love, but folks down there rarely see a celebrity that didn’t come out of a UFO, so they can be excused.

Dodgers fans are tougher, right?

Ramirez was going to be, um, needled, right?

Even here in this gorgeous gem of a ballpark known simply as The Diamond, against a team wearing wonderful throwback San Diego Padres uniforms, Dodgers fans surely wouldn’t be afraid to hold their best player accountable to the same standards they apply to themselves.

As I am sure you can infer from the tone of the article, Plaschke was disappointed, as Dodger fans did nothing but cheer Manny all afternoon. Let me lay it out for Bill, Plaschke-style, with each sentence being a paragraph of its own.

Fans no longer care about steroids.

They have reached the point where they think that everybody was doing it, and have therefore moved past the recriminations and accusations that the media seems to be struggling to let go.

The media can moralize and tell the fans how they should feel all they want, but it will not change anything.

If you write the same articles after each star is caught, eventually we get so over-saturated that we become numb to the whole thing.

We get the point, you are outraged and want everyone to feel the same way.

Well, it is time for you to come to grips with one simple fact.

Outside of a few purists and those who blindly follow what the media tells them to think, fans just cannot get too worked up over steroids anymore.

Deal with it.

I had Buster Olney’s A-Rod article open on my browser for the last few days, planning on pounding out an article on it this afternoon. Alas, the best laid plans often fall by the wayside, as Ben over at RAB essentially wrote the article I was planning to put forth. Here is only a small portion of Olney’s larger point:

The Yankees will keep playing him and ignore the question that hovers over Rodriguez and every other aging player who has been linked to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. They have to hope that what they’re seeing is someone simply struggling to recover from hip surgery, someone who is prone to doubts, anyway. They have to hope that he will start to hit eventually. They have to hope that he isn’t overcome by frustration with his performance and simply decides to pack it in and have the more extensive hip surgery that he already knows he needs.
The Yankees might be asking themselves the same question that rival talent evaluators are asking, about whether A-Rod without steroids is, in his mid-30s, destined to be a shell of what he was in his mid-20s, when he says he was young and stupid and juicing. But there really isn’t much point in the Yankees’ dwelling on any of that, because they cannot change the terms of his contract, they cannot ever know how much of A-Rod’s success was built on his talent and how much was predicated on his PED use.

And here is the portion of Ben’s take that echoes my thinking on the matter:

In reality, A-Rod’s slump was just that. He had a bad stretch brought about by fatigue in his hip. Yet, despite that reality, despite the surgery, we’re going to get eight years of badly written columns about A-Rod’s decline, A-Rod’s being a shell of his former self, A-Rod’s no longer steroid-filled physique. Forget the natural decline brought about by age. Forget talent. That’s the baseball world in which we live. Olney, though, should know better.

Every time Alex has a poor stretch, we are going to have a deluge of similar columns, questioning the cause of his struggles and inevitably linking them to steroids. Are you ready for eight years of questions?

Yesterday we learned that A-Rod tested positive for anabolic steroids in 2003. Today, the media vultures are out, picking at the bones of the player that they had previously trumpeted as the great clean hope. Buster Olney believes Alex to be tarnished forever, and luminaries such as John Kruk, Tom Verducci, and Bill Madden feel that he should never be allowed into the Hall of Fame. Once again, the sanctimonious media is telling the masses that we should be livid, shouting their righteous indignation from the rooftops over the fact that they were, gasp, lied to by another superstar. 

The hand wringing in the media is designed to distract us from one simple fact that the Olney’s and Verducci’s of the world desperately want us to ignore. Those guys were in the Yankee clubhouse in the late 90’s all the time. They criticize GM’s for not knowing what was going on in terms of baseball’s drug culture, yet they spent more time around these players than anyone but the managers and trainers. How did they miss what was going on?

The answer is quite simple, and is so damning as to pretty much disqualify any moral haranguing that you read from any reporter who worked during that era. They did not miss it, they just chose to ignore it. Home runs were good for the game that they cover and love, and they did not want to be whistle blowers. Whistle blowers are left on the outside looking in at all the fun, and the media members loved being insiders, loved being in on the grand party that was major league baseball at the turn of the century. Why turn Mark McGwire in when it will cost you his trust and your access to other players? So they just turned the other way while the players flaunted their use.  In 1998, when someone asked McGwire about the andro in his locker, the writers skewered him for digging into someone else’s business. Now those same writers applaud when one of their colleagues procures sealed evidence of a supposedly anonymous drug test. The double standard and disingenuous nature of their actions make their moral proclamations “in the defense of the game” seem ridiculous. Suddenly you find it vitally important to defend the game? Where was that moral imperative as the players were bulking up around you?

Ultimately, the writers are just as culpable in creating the steroids morass that has engulfed the sport as anyone else. They only took heed once players like Canseco and Caminiti forced the issue out into the open. So spare me the moral indignation from the sports writers, as they are bemoaning the very situation that they helped create.

Yankees fans are a notoriously fickle bunch. Players who do not fit the mold of the “True Yankee” often find themselves drawing the home crowd’s ire whever they fail, while having their successes glossed over or ignored. Such has been the fate of Alex Rodriguez, as the radio waves and stadium seats are filled with people bemoaning his every failure while dismissing his achievements as being “unclutch.” However, the A-Rod phenomenon has an added layer of intrigue when compared to the typical “can’t do it in New York” fare. Every time Alex touches the field, he stands just a few feet to the right of Mr. Yankee himself, Derek Jeter.

Jeter and Alex were once friends, but Derek cast A-Rod aside for comments he made about him in an interview. When Alex came to the Yankees, he moved to third base to accommodate Derek, but his slow start and playoff failures did nothing to endear himself to the fans. Although some of the frostiness between the two players has apparently dissolved over the years, fans began to view the two players as rivals, and a divide among the faithful emerged. You could be pro-Jeter, holding him up as the paragon of what a ballplayer should be while deriding A-Rod as a stat padder who always attracted negative publicity. Or, you could be pro-Alex, marveling at his insane talent while wondering why Jeter would not support him. Most people root for both, hoping that they would succeed for the team’s sake, but everybody picked a side. Personally, I find myself leaning increasingly towards Alex. It gets harder all the time, and never more so than with today’s news about his positive steroid test.

The debate typically follows some fairly obvious lines, oft repeated and fairly accurate. Wherever Derek is strong, Alex is weak, and fans love to harp on those points. Derek is the humble kid who calls his manager Mr. Torre and leads by example. Alex is the flamboyant slugger who struggles to fit in and is not loved by teammates. Derek frequently has his parents at games and dates all the hot young starlets. Alex cheats on his wife and then dumps her for an over the hill, slightly creepy crooner. Derek is Mr. Super Clutch, while Alex is Mr. Can’t Do It In The Big Spot. If Derek went 1-12 on a homestand and Alex went 11-12, people would always focus on that one anomalous result for both.

And yet, for all the drama that stuck to A-Rod, for all the points within this comparison at which he failed, it really makes no difference at the end of the day. He is the better ballplayer, and that is all that matters to those who defend Alex. When their careers are finished, Jeter is likely to be considered among the top 10 shortstops of all time. A-Rod will be viewed as one of the top 10 players of all time. He is just incredibly talented, and his numbers would always be his saving grace in the comparison to Derek. Until now.

Now, everything is shrouded in doubt. Was he ever clean? How much of his production can be attributed to steroids? Considering that 103 other players also tested positive, it seems unfair that A-Rod will have to deal with these questions as if he was the only player whose numbers were tainted. However, the fact is that he took steroids, and now he will have to reap what he has sown. It becomes almost impossible to defend A-Rod at this point. Although plenty of players were doing it, plenty of players were not, and Alex just chose the wrong side of that dichotomy to be on. As far as we know at this point, Derek was clean, and Alex was not. For now, the debate is over.