MLB, the Yankees and A-Rod: a dirty ‘menage’
By Rene Pastor
Things are not what they seem in the ongoing dispute between Alex Rodriguez and the Major League Baseball. The Yankee third baseman said there are “layers” in the increasingly bitter battle between him versus the MLB and the New York Yankees.
Actually, he is correct.
A-Rod faces a suspension from baseball this year and all of 2014 for alleged doping — yet again — and then interfering in the investigation. In “Law and Order,” what Rodriguez did is obstruction.
In the real world, you get jail time for that. In baseball, they want to suspend A-Rod or ban him from the game for good.
The thing is nobody is an innocent in this feud. Rodriguez believes the Yankees and MLB are in a “conspiracy” to kick him out of the game. “People have been trying to get creative to cancel my contract,” he told reporters.
The Yankees do not want him because the $100 million still owed the player is an albatross for the team. More importantly, they do not think of A-Rod as a “real” Yankee who deserves to join the other Yankee greats in Monument Park. Rodriguez is seen as a money-grubbing, selfish player who alienates teammates.
Team favorite Derek Jeter is considered the epitome of a true Yankee. It is indeed telling that Jeter was allowed to rehab with the team while A-Rod was thrown to Pennsylvania to get his legs under him.
The Yankees are now trying to hide behind MLB’s “skirt” to get A-Rod out of its hands. Which is disingenuous because they signed the guy to a 10-year extension till 2017.
The MLB under Commissioner Bud Selig, on the other hand, wants to make amends for looking the other way during the steroid era. For them, A-Rod’s renewed dalliance with steroids provides a perfect opportunity to show they will now crack down hard on drug cheats in the game. They went after this investigation with a zeal they never showed when steroids nearly wrecked the national pastime.
This time, they showed that a player will not be allowed to continue playing when substance abuse takes over completely.
Rodriguez is a perfect target for both MLB and the Yankees. He is widely reviled as a drug user and no one believes him when he said he only used steroids while with the Texas Rangers.
He is also, in the parlance of Filipinos “mukhang pera” and shows no class at all, especially in the way he humiliated his wife by his dalliances with assorted celebrity bimbos up and down the East Coast.
If MLB can suspend A-Rod through the end of the 2014 season, he will come back to the game at age 39. At that point, the Yankees may just waive him or pay whatever penalty so they do not have to see him on the team again.
Effectively, the suspension bans him from the game for good.
The MLB baseball players’ union is trying desperately to broker a deal because the last thing they want is to defend A-Rod in public and drag down the rest of the clean players in the game.
This is like one of those “Soprano” episodes which does not end well for anyone.
