This is the sad state of Major League Baseball.....NEW YORK (AP) - Alex Rodriguez admitted Monday that he used performance-enhancing drugs from 2001-03, saying he did so because of the pressures of being baseball's highest-paid player.
"When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day," the New York Yankees star said in an interview with ESPN that was broadcast Monday shortly after it was recorded.
A-Rod was just doing what everybody else does who wants to get ahead. Obama hires tax-cheats left and right and nobody seems to care. But let a baseball player cheat in his profession, and you'd think the world was ending.
The world's not ending, but major league baseball might soon become a second teir sport. As players juiced their games, the owners looked the other way because big performances puts asses in the seats, the players' union warned players about drug testing, and advertizers liked the big money that comes with big performances. Everybody knew it was going on but nobody wanted to kill the goose that layed the golden eggs for everybody. It seems that the record books for the last 15 years or so may have to be thrown out in order to preserve the integrity of the game. Look at the super-stars that we idolized: Sosa, McGwire, Palmiero, Bonds, Clemens, Petit, now Rodriguez. The only clean star left pretty much is Jeter. I wonder when he'll fall too. The message that people are getting is that it's perfectly OK to cheat, that is unless you get caught. Baseball players and talented politicians have learned that cheating is how you win, and as long as you have something to offer, people will shrug and look the other way.
As a lifelong baseball fan, it makes me not even interested in watching games any more. I'll bet I didn't watch 5 games last year. Baseball in America had better watch out, or it'll end up like pro cycling in Europe. Nobody cares.
2 comments:
Ed,
Don't forget, this is only about drugs. Just like the Michael Phelps issue. Neither of these fine athletes should face one second of scrutiny, blame or punishment. After all, our own President smoked pot and snorted a pile of cocaine and proudly wrote about it in his book. No one cares about that. Why should this matter to anyone?
Right you are, Pat. If The One did it and it means nothing, why should it mean anything when an ordinary citizen does still less?
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