In the confusion that followed the allegations, A-Rod seemed to be avoiding a comment, but he came out swinging by admitting to years of use, to Peter Gammons.
"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," Rodriguez told ESPN's Peter Gammons in an exclusive interview in Miami Beach, Fla. An extended interview will air on SportsCenter at 6 p.m. ET.
"Back then, [baseball] was a different culture," Rodriguez said. "It was very loose. I was young, I was stupid, I was naive. And I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time.
"I did take a banned substance. And for that, I am very sorry and deeply regretful."
So I guess that covers that. Dan Szymborski who does the wonderful ZiPS projection system amongst other things has this opinion piece at BTF.
In 2004, Major League Baseball, under the terms of an agreement with the MLBPA, started instituting penalties for players that tested positive for certain drugs that were believed to be drug-enhancing.
25 years before, Major League Baseball also came to terms with the MLBPA on a drug-testing deal, though cocaine was the more worrisome issue in the eyes of the public. Unfortunately, Bowie Kuhn subsequently announced that he was the final authority for anything not specifically outlined in the drug-testing arrangement, forcing the union to opt out of the agreement at their earliest allowed juncture. Future commissioners further muddied the waters, ending any hopes for a new drug-testing agreement, most notably Fay Vincent, who attempted to circumvent the contract agreed to with the MLBPA and then taking the further, reprehensible step of actually threatening Gene Michael, Buck Showalter, and Jack Lawn in order to prevent them from testifying to the arbitrator. There simply was no reason for players to trust the owners at this point.
But are the owners to blame for the various performance-enhancing drugs used in baseball and other sports over the last 50 years? Nope.
Any blame, if there is blame to be distributed, should be pointed directly at how we, the fans, view athletic excellence.
We expect our athletes to be supermen. Hurt your hamstring and have to miss games? You're a slacker and should get back into the game. Torn labrum? Stop being a sissy and bear it, Don Drysdale didn't need no MRI! Stress fracture in your foot? Rub some dirt on it.
For fans, the belief has always been that athletic excellence is something that an athlete should risk everything for. Playing in pain, running into walls, brutal crushing tackles, are the currency of fandom's love and abiding respect.
I think it's a very good piece, largely because it reaffirms my own thinking on this subject which has been growing for some years.Yeah, I know, there's nothing like something that reconfirms your prejudices, except it's not a prejudice. I've been forced to think about this for a long time. Thank you Bud Selig, Donald Fehr and all you muthas who dragged their bleeding heels in the MLB and MLBPA.
One of the more interesting observations I have seen around the traps is that the players have always been the players: members of a competitive, privileged club, who are always looking for an edge. in other eras there were amphetamines and stimulants. It is just that the ethical standards have changed around them, and they are being exposed for being dinosaurs.
It's not exactly Ben Johnson either because the game didn't ban it, so the guys who did it, did so with a tacit non-disapproval, which amounted to a tacit approval. How weak is that? And as for Ben Johnson (an Tim Montgomery who broke Ben Johnson's number and turned out to be on PEDs too), nobody can take away from him the fact that he ran as fast as he did. Even Carl Lewis who was given the Gold in that race as Johnson was disqualified, turned out to have a PED taint in his career. Nobody can deny Big Mac and Bonds and A-Rod hit those jacks and they went over the fence.
And the people cheered. It was all 'good'. Remember?
I had a conversation with Walk-Off HBP and he said that the abject hypocrisy of the sports media was simply astounding. Because he carried Barry Bonds in a Keeper League for years and years, he read the entire posts to do with Bonds' career in the years he was lauded for hitting the homers, and then reviled for being a steroid user, often by the very same journalists who did the lauding.
In Walk-Off HBP's opinion, it was obvious Bonds and Big mac were ALWAYS abusing steroids, so it was laughable that it when they were being lauded and reprehensibly hypocritical when they were being condemned. Besides which what exactly do steroids do for you in Baseball?
Walk-Off HBP's theory is that being anabolic, they help recovery and therefore allow the athlete to perform at their peak more often than without. Everybody thinks it is about the strength, but that is hardly how it would impact the game, in Walk-Off HBP's opinion.
Steve Goldman has this piece in the Pinstriped Bible.
ESPN has posted a very deceptive bit of statistical analysis. It's a two-column table. It says that in the three seasons that Rodriguez cops to using, 2001 through 2003, he averaged .305, hit .52 home runs, and slugged .615. In the other 10 seasons of his career, he batted .309, hit 39 home runs, and slugged .574. Looks pretty damning -- the guy picked up 13 home runs a year on the juice! However, those statistics are not park or league adjusted. More important than any juice is the fact that Rodriguez went from a difficult home park to a very generous one. In his last year in Seattle, Rodriguez hit .272/.406/.502 at home with 13 home runs in 265 at-bats, but .356/.433/.702 with 28 home runs in 289 at-bats. In 2001, those numbers nearly reversed themselves. He hit .361/.439/.677 at home, .276/.359/.567 on the road. The splits for 2002 and 2003 are very similar.
If you do the necessary adjustments, Rodriguez's offensive production ranks this way (I'm using Equivalent Average as my stat of choice):
1. 2007
2. 2005
3. 2000
4. 1996
5. 2001
6. 2008
7. 2002
8. 2003
9. 2006
10. 1998
11. 2004
12. 1999
13. 1997
The point here is not to let Rodriguez off the hook for juicing, but to have some fairness in our response. If we accept that he has been clean since 2003 -- and I admit that believing any ballplayer about anything is a huge problem right now -- then it is impossible to say that his best work has been the product of any artificial sweeteners.
Yeah, that's a big maybe too, Steve.
The Dude at Audio Darnok mentioned to me he had to take steroids for a week because of a sinus problem. He said during the week he took the steroids, he felt like he was charged up and ready to go all the time. He didn't experience roid rage but he said he felt like he was bouncing with endless energy. He reported that just having it seemed to focus his mind and become superhuman in his ability to stay with tasks. He joked that the music mixes he did that week were definitely "performance enhanced".
I still don't know what to make of all of this. I don't really care about the record books. I don't care about Hall of Fame chances. I don't care about the straight and crooked numbers. Now, I just think the Yankees ought to win and that's that - and for that to happen, A-Rod just has to hit and hit and hit. Yay for the pinstriped laundry.
Oh, and doesn't Derek Jeter come out looking great again, just as every time A-Rod has a moral failure? If it ever came out he was on PEDs, I think I'll have a stroke. :)
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