It's official. First Alex Rodriguez was revealed to have tested positive for steroids in 2003, and now he admits to using them from to 2001-2003 while with the Texas Rangers.
Like most people, I wasn't surprised when the positive test story broke. It seems like everyone in baseball took steroids during that bad period.
But when ARod actually admitted to it, and on top of that admitted to 3 years of doping instead of just the assumed one...that was huge. Sure guys like Jason Giambi, Andy Pettite, and Jason Grimsley admitted to using. But none of these guys have quite the weight on their implications that ARod does. So him admitting to use is very impressive, especially in light of how other players have handled acqusations.
This does not, however, clean anything up for me. For one, I'm still a Red Sox fan. So even though I respect his courage to come clean and be a man, he's still a douche and I still hope he hits .215 with 3 homeruns this year at the hot corner for the Yankees. But also, how does MLB deal with ARod's stats? Barring something preposterous, ARod is going to set many, many records. But does he just get an asterik like Bonds does? Or does he get an asterik with a star since he was a nice guy? I'd like to say his steroids didn't matter, but he averaged 13 more HR per year in his steroid years than in his non steroid years, and that's a pretty huge difference. Can you subtract 39 homers and call it even? Get rid of 3 years of stats and call it even? Okay neither of those ideas are really serious...but what would you do?
Third, and most important of all, is that if ARod and Bonds and Clemens and Giambi were all juicing, then who wasn't? I assume Rafael Belliard was clean, and I like to think that guys like Greg Maddux and Fred McGriff didn't as well (after all they were my favorite players as kids). But who else was clean? I want validation! Curt Schilling agrees with me. Curt recently said that all 104 players who tested positive back in 2003 ought be named. That's a little extreme for me. But if some of the great players of our time could be proven innocent, or if some of these players could, like ARod, admit to use, then maybe MLB could finally get past this a little bit. I don't think MLB will ever really get past it until another decade or two from now, but the truth is a start, and for that I almost sort of kind of respect Alex Rodriguez (for today only, tomorrow I hope he sets the strikeout record this year with 400 k's).
ARod admits to Steroid Use (okay it's the headline on every sports website, but my take is only on Outside the Boxscore)
