Repentant cheater A-Rod slams Astros with lesson on how to handle their own scandal | Opinion
The public rehabilitation of Alex Rodriguez is complete. A-Rod did the crime, did the time, and now he’s back in the game. In its embrace. He has an ESPN microphone in his hand as a baseball analyst. He put an engagement ring on J-Lo’s hand. Life is good.
The rehab came full circle this week. It happened Tuesday, during a spring training broadcast of a Yankees-Red Sox game, with his most direct contrition to date on his own steroids scandal. That public remorse in turn emboldened to blister the Houston Astros over their scandal.
This was Alex Rodriguez, convicted cheater, sort of reclaiming the moral high ground. It was quite a thing to see.
Surely there is an ulterior motive. A-Rod’s sudden outright contrition might be aimed at the 2022 Hall of Fame vote that will find his name on the ballot for the first time. He has seen how not coming clean on past sins has failed others such as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, so he has nothing to lose with the hands-up mea culpa.
As a strategy, I-did-it-and-I’m-sorry as an ulterior motive here is not wrong. It’s smart, actually. Honesty is good, and better late than never.
It was fascinating, and rather impressively seamless, the way A-Rod intertwined, compared and contrasted the sign-stealing scandal embroiling the Houston Astros organization with his own controversies.
It began in the fourth inning of a spring broadcast from Tampa when play-by-play guy Matt Vasgersian asked Rodriguez about the Astros scandal.
It was a fastball grooved down the middle of the plate. A-Rod was ready.
“You cheat, you win a championship, there is no suspension, and then there’s no remorse,” he said. “The last one is probably the worst one because people want to see remorse. They want a real, authentic apology and they have not received that thus far.”
Then he played his ace: “From a guy who has made as many mistakes as anybody on the biggest stage — I served the longest suspension in MLB history, it cost me well over $35 million, and you know what? I deserved that,” Rodriguez continued. “I came back. I owned it after acting like a buffoon for a long time. I had my apologies, and then I went dark. I wanted my next move to be contrite and change my narrative. You have to be accountable. I felt the hatred from the people, and I earned it.”
Well-played, that. Calculated, I’m sure. But well played nonetheless.
Suddenly A-Rod gets to be the guy speaking from experience, the one analyst whose criticism of the Astros really resonates because he has been there, done that. He has done wrong and learned the hard way that you don’t deal with your wrongdoing with a stack of denials and with umbrage for the very accusations. You don’t deal with it by hoping people will forget. They won’t. Nor will they forgive. Unless you ask for it.
A-Rod was in the middle of the Miami-based Biogenesis PEDs scandal, circa 2013, and was suspended for the entire 2014 season.
The Astros’ low- and high-tech sign-stealing throughout the 2017 season helped them win (or steal) the World Series, a scandal unexposed until November 2019. Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred suspended manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow for the entire 2020 season, and both were fired by owner Jim Crane.
Managers Alex Cora and Carlos Beltran were named in the report and lost their jobs with the Red Sox and Mets. (Cora was Houston’s 2017 bench coach and Beltran was a member of the team).
But no active Astros players were punished, nor was the championship rescinded.
“Everybody knows they stole the ring from us,” said the Dodgers’ Cody Bellinger.
The Astros’ lack of contrition has made things all the worse, and assured the scandal will follow the now-villainous team throughout the season and perhaps beyond.
“Our opinion is that this didn’t impact the game,” the Astros owner Crane dared to say.
Batters beg to differ. The Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton said he could hit 80 home runs if he knew the pitches that were coming.
The Astros embarrassed baseball and themselves. And the fans who should be the most ashamed are the ones in Houston.
The “real, authentic apology” has yet to come.
Houston Astros, when A-Rod tries to tell you how to survive and get past the mess you caused, maybe you should listen.
This story was originally published March 4, 2020 at 10:51 AM.
