Do Not Forget A-Rod Was a Great Ballplayer

Alex Rodriguez is playing his final game in Yankee pinstripes on Friday. One season removed from his triumphant return to the game after a season long suspension for his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal where he was accused of taking performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), he is being unceremoniously released by the Yankees with just under 2 months left in the regular season. He is a shell of his former self, and it is unfortunate that for many, this will be how he is remembered. A-Rod gets a lot of hate thrown his way, and some of it is deserved, and some of it just goes hand in hand with being one of the most talented players to ever play the game. Also playing more than half of your career as a New York Yankee isn’t going to do you many favours either in the popularity department.

I was 12 years old when A-Rod played his first full season for the Seattle Mariners in 1996 and what a season it was. At age 20, he finished second in MVP voting, leading the American league in runs scored, doubles, batting average and total bases, while compiling a WAR rating of 9.4 the third highest total in the MLB that season behind Ken Griffey Jr. and Barry Bonds. This was the start of Major League Baseball’s resurgence, after the players’ strike that had cancelled the remainder of the 1994 season. Fans were upset with teams, owners and players that they felt were greedy millionaires, fighting with greedy billionaires. I myself had been disappointed that the season wiped out the Montreal Expos best shot at post season glory, but my love for the game did not waver during that time, and it is perhaps that I was just the right age, old enough to understand what was going on, yet still innocent and in awe of the players, uniforms and stadiums, that I harboured no ill feelings towards the game.

As a baseball fan, how could you in an era that we were treated to not only some of the greatest offensive players in the history of the game, but some of the greatest pitchers of all time too. I remember watching an episode of This Week In Baseball that ran a feature on the relationship between A-Rod who was still a Mariner and Derek Jeter. Two friends who played ball together as kids and were now both starting shortstops in the MLB. They seemed like regular guys who liked to poke fun at each other, but when it came to the game, they had fun but they worked hard. Anyone who says that A-Rod cheated his way through and didn’t put in any work is greatly misinformed about how PEDs work and about how the game of baseball works. I often use former Montreal Expo F.P. Santangelo as an example, and it is not meant to be disrespectful to him, but he was suspected of taking PEDs, and he had 21 career homeruns in 7 Major League seasons. PEDs don’t give you great vision, intelligence or hand eye coordination. You can’t teach those things, you can train, but you have to be born with those gifts.

The relationship between the two star shortstops would become even more intertwined as the years went on. It is easy to look at the two players and compare their dramatically different baseball career paths with Jeter as the face of the game, who played it the right way with respect and stayed out of the tabloid pages. While this is true, you can’t have Derek Jeter without Alex Rodriguez. If everyone was as squeaky clean as Jeter or Mike Trout the game would be a lot less captivating. In order to have a hero to root for, you need a villain to root against.

In May of 1999, A-Rod was on the cover of USA Today’s Baseball Weekly. The cover story was a feature on the top 25 players under the age of 25. At the time that under 25 All-Star team included A-Rod, Scott Rolen, Vladimir Guerrero, Andruw Jones and probably the guy you would least expect to be the last one standing in the Majors, Bartolo Colon. Colon is also the last guy who you would suspect of taking PED’s, but in August of 2012, he was suspended for 50 games for failing a drug test. Where is the hate for Colon? He had to miss the remainder of the 2012 season, leaving the team in the middle of a pennant race and was a key part of their rotation and success. The A’s finished first that year but lost in the first round of the playoffs. Colon today is celebrated for his longevity, his continued success late in his career, his joyful attitude and his less than athletic body. Is it perhaps because he is relatable? His physique more closely resembles that of the average fan than it does the specimen of physical fitness that are some of the modern athletes in the game.

It is easy to hate A-Rod. He signed the first 10 year, $250M contract in baseball with the Texas Rangers in 2001. Immediately he was criticized for taking such an enormous contract, but really, if you had one of the best agents in sports and you had just hit 41 homeruns and that was your lowest total of the past 3 seasons, would you say no? You might if you didn’t think you had earned it, or if you felt that you couldn’t live up to the pressure that comes hand in hand with a quarter of a billion dollars. And maybe pressure to perform was one of the factors that led A-Rod to take PED’s from 2001 to 2003. I can see where people might get upset. He is already supremely talented, an established All-Star, top 1% DNA on the planet, he’s good looking, excessively wealthy and now he’s going to seek a competitive advantage on top of all that? Leave some for the rest of us A-Rod!

What people often fail to realize is that Major League Baseball had no ban on PED’s at that time, and they only rolled out The Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program in 2006. There are those that will say cheating is cheating, he tried to deceive us, and all of his production is a big lie. Firstly, it is so far impossible to determine to what degree PEDs help a players performance, and secondly, the MLB was aware of the rampant use of PEDs in the game in the late 90s and early 2000s and turned a blind eye to it. Attendance had been suffering for years after the strike in 94, but the Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa homerun chase of ’98 changed all of that. The explosion of offense in that era drove fans in record numbers back to ballparks across North America. Once the league had successfully gotten back on its feet again, and facing increasing pressure from media and other organizations such as the IOC to investigate the rumoured, rampant use of PEDs in the game, the MLB saw its opportunity to take the moral high ground and denounce all those who had been suspected of taking PEDs. Those same stars they had praised as the saviours of the game. I have a difficult time faulting the players when there were no penalties and the league was taking full advantage of them. Also the game of baseball is supremely difficult and no amount of PEDs will make you a star.

Having known players around the game who spent many years in various organizations throughout the MLB, and hearing them talk about PEDs, it was a hell of a lot more pervasive in the game than most people realize. Let us not forget that hitters were not the only ones taking these substances, pitchers did too, thus creating an enhanced, yet level playing field.

As disliked as A-Rod was already, he was traded to the Yankees, at the height of their status as the Evil Empire and signed another 10 year deal, this time worth $275M. The Boston Red Sox had been in talks with A-Rod before he signed with the Yankees, and becoming a Yankee is really all you need to do to be hated by all of New England. As much as Sox fans hated him, Yankees fans hated him more. They had unrealistic expectations of perfection from a guy who had been an All-Star in 7 of his first full 8 seasons. A-Rod was the best shortstop on the New York Yankees, yet he opted to play third base alongside his friend Derek Jeter who had been an average defender and was certainly not improving in the field. As selfish as he may have been, that was one of the most team first moves that any player can make, leaving your natural position and learning a new one for the sake of the team. I think this is an often overlooked aspect of his time in New York. He certainly wasn’t safe from pop culture taking jabs at him either. The 2010 film, The Other Guys, stars Mark Wahlberg as a NYC cop stuck at a desk job because he accidentally shot Derek Jeter while on duty at Yankee Stadium in the playoffs, earning him the nickname, Yankee Clipper. One of his co workers exclaims that Jeter is a “bi racial angel” while another cop yells out “You should’ve shot A-Rod!” This illustrates oddly tumultuous relationship between New Yorkers and A-Rod, especially considering the movie was released following the Yankees 2009 World Series victory that A-Rod played a significant role in. Then again, when are New Yorkers easy to please?

It is hard to say now what A-Rods legacy will be. I do not believe that even though his last game as a Yankee will be played on August 12, that it will be his last in a big league uniform. Alex is known for wanting to always be in control of every situation he is in, and his release from the Yankees is not on his own terms, so I do not think this is the last of A-Rod. The man is 4 homeruns shy of 700 for his career and only 3 other players in the history of the game have reached that milestone. That is a milestone that has always been in his eyes, and I believe he will do whatever he can to reach that goal and go out on his terms.

His full year suspension from the MLB in 2014 is the real wrinkle in A-Rods legacy. While PEDs were not banned back in 2003, they most certainly were when he got caught up in the Biogenesis scandal. To me, Alex will always be one of the best baseball players to ever play the game. The Hall of Fame question is a tough one, and I do not think that the Baseball Writers Association will be very kind to him, but his talents as a player cannot be denied. I do not subscribe to the notion that all professional athletes should be squeaky clean role models for the younger generation. They are the best at what they do, and as with any employer, they will hire the best guy for the job. Of course distractions are unwelcomed and can affect a clubhouse, but again guys like, Derek Jeter, Cal Ripken Jr. Mike Trout and Roberto Clemente are even more special when they are contrasted with villains like A-Rod. Is he the biggest cheater of all time as many claim? No. Simply, he is one of many who took PEDs, he just also happened to be one of the greatest baseball players to ever play the game.