The Cheating Cyborg: The Alex Rodriguez Saga

As the sports world woke up Saturday to the sobering reality of Alex Rodriguez, the game’s best slugger, being the latest name attached to the Steroid Era, I sat there with much less shock than the majority of the sportswriters of America.

I have never been a fan of Alex Rodriguez. I envy him but I don’t like watching him. I envy the two huge contracts he got, and the numerous companies that have paid him to sponsor their products. I envy his skills because its clear he’s better than just about every single player.

What I don’t envy is who he is as a person.

I’m not going to pretend to know him personally. I don’t. But the point is, I don’t think anyone does, not even himself.

Everything that you saw in that ESPN interview I take with a grain of salt. Why?

Because he’s a manufactured athlete. He’s living his real life with cue cards. Nothing about Alex Rodriguez oozes personality. There’s nothing really likeable about his outwardly noticeable traits that warm you inside.

For all we know, he’s not human, but a cyborg. A thing more than anything, devoid of any emotion so why should we feel anything towards him?

That is until today. Until last weekend when Selena Roberts got the scoop of her journalistic career. Until yesterday when Alex Rodriguez had to make that prepared statement of an apology to Peter Gammons on ESPN.com. This morning, Alex Rodriguez was free to be a human being.

Let me explain what I mean.

Since Alex was young and dubbed a phenom, his life has been a set of meticulously planned steps. He had to reach goals by certain years of his life and by the time he got the contract offer from the Texas Rangers to sign for 10 years and $252 million dollars, he was a programmed machine. He was a member of the 40/40 club at the age of 23. He had averaged 36 hr’s and 115 RBI’s every season prior to signing the richest contract in major league baseball history. Every step was taken with thorough planning and precision.

Slowly along the way his head was filled with even bigger numbers and now, with the contract, bigger expectations. But something happened that should have alerted us before signing with the Rangers that this wasn’t a human being so much as a machine.

He talked to his good friend Derek Jeter about coming to New York, playing at Shea, and the two of them ruling the game of baseball from the big apple. Jeter had by that time won 4 world championships in his first four years while A-Rod had piled on the stats. While their achievements are seen as two different things they had a commonality: to be great.

While Jeter came to a team that had the history and the name and the supporting cast, A-Rod came to a team that needed him to be the go-to guy as their stars were leaving them one by one. While a brief flirtation with the Mets fizzled out because, well let’s face it, the richest contract was thrown in front of his face (and more importantly Scott Boras’ face), it was how A-Rod decided to handle the onslaught of New York barbs thrown his way that really showed us who he is.

A-Rod’s team of know it alls thought it would be good publicity if they let Esquire do what was supposed to be a puff piece about him to kind of take off this mask that the media had put on him about being a greedy athlete that cared more about the money than winning.

So what did our friend A-Rod decide to do? He threw his good friend under the bus. He said that Jeter didn’t have to lead. That he wasn’t the kind of athlete that teams game planned against. Basically, Jeter wasn’t him. Of course, Jeter was comfortable in his skin and never truly responded as his four championships to Alex Rodriguez’s none speaks for itself.

Let us not forget that he did the interview with Scott Boras sitting with him the whole way. As if to know him as a person we needed his agent there sitting next to him.

That was our first bit of evidence that Alex Rodriguez was not real. He wasn’t truthful with himself. Hidden behind an array of yes men who would believe anything he wanted to believe but unknowingly being controlled by people who had nothing but their own interests at heart.

His game never translated in Texas into wins and after four years of meaningless baseball and piling on statistics, he was traded to the Yankees. But according to his own admission he used steroids from 2001 to 2003 because of the pressure that his contract put on him to succeed.

I believe that’s a reason that a person in Alex Rodriguez’s shoes would do that. Performance Enhancing Drugs (or PED’s) were so prevalent in baseball locker rooms that its almost a mockery of our intelligence that only now are sportswriters, journalists, owners of teams, and other players acting shocked by the names that are being uncovered. If its true that 80% of players were using some sort of PED’s then the fact that the best baseball players of that era using it should come as no shock or surprise anyone.

Alex said he was motivated to break records and he had goals. But were they for himself? Does he even have a say in his own life? He’s a person guided along by people who plan his every move. Anthony Rieber wrote a terrific article about this where he did a fantastic and hilarious yet at the same time tragically truthful, retake on every single one of Alex Rodriguez’s answers to Peter Gammons.

His wardrobe was probably pre-purchased. His responses all memorized. The single most damning moment of the interview was when he apologized to the Texas Ranger fans, for a second he looked into the camera, fully cognizant of where it was in the room, and then quickly looked away, because as I’m sure he was warned it would be a bit too fake.

His long pauses and deep stares into who knows where, meant to be seen as remorseful flashbacks, were completely bogus. It wouldn’t surprise me if Peter Gammons was on the payroll. I found it very surprising that A-Rod decided to do an interview with such a major world wide publication like ESPN. But as I saw as I researched it a bit deeper it was meant solely as a PR ploy. To begin turning the publicity elsewhere. It was all so fake.

His response to certain specific moments of how and when and how many times he used were met with confusion and ambiguity on A-Rod’s part, but when asked to think about other times where he realized it was wrong, he could remember exactly what he was doing, where he was and what he was thinking. It was cold, it was calculating and it was absent of any kind of morality that baseball fans were hoping to hear.

Did people buy the apology? Sure. I sure as heck didn’t. There are a lot of troubling things about this entire story that still don’t sit well with me. His interview with Katie Couric in which he explicitly denies taking steroids was answered by A-Rod in the ESPN interview by explaining that his inability to tell the truth to others was because he was lying to himself. Well, that’s fine. But that moment was completely drawn up by his people again.

In 2007 as A-Rod was going through his best season, and as the steroids debate was continuing to gain major tread, A-Rod went ahead of the curve to come on the show and be interviewed about a subject that he previously never was included in. He denied using steroids and the explanation was very clear. Why would he put on that charade if he knew that he had taken steroids and done all this before 2003? Simple. His entire staff never for one second believed that this report would leak and his name would ever be implicated with the steroids group.

It was, and now he once again had to jump ahead of the hounds and control the way people would perceive him. So he did this interview this time for the same reason he did the Katie Couric interview the first time.

It was that same rehearsed, well coached A-Rod that met Selena Roberts initial reaction to the report with the “you have to talk to the union” response.

He was so clueless on how to be himself the proof was made clear in Joe Torre’s book where he asked Alex Rodriguez to get his own coffee so he could be looked at as a normal guy. He got his own coffee and showed Joe Torre but the fact is, he never understood the reason that Torre wanted him to do it. If someone in higher authority told him to do something his natural response was to do it because that’s how he was wired.

But something happened to me as I finished reading the numerous amounts of people ripping his legacy. I finally found myself feeling bad for him. His entire career had now been defined by this steroid test. His name was the only one out of 103 that had been released by a woman, Selena Roberts, who’s slated to have a book out about him in April a few days before pitchers and catchers report.

His pursuit of greatness had been derailed. One Yankees official reacting to the A-Rod mess said “this is his own deal.” They allowed Clemens and Pettite to clear the air on their issues under the protective wing of the Yankee name. Heck, EVEN JASON GIAMBI. But the Yankees thus far have taken a far away stance on A-Rod. Because he’s not a Yankee. He’s indicative of what the Yankees have been lately. He’s indicative of what baseball’s been lately. Hitmen. Remorseless, callous, genetic freaks who care nothing for the logo emblazoned on their jersey, just as long as they have the money and the influence.

But this morning and every morning from here on out, Alex Rodriguez will wake up with this scarlet letter. He won’t have to hide from anything. His dirty laundry has been aired and while there may be more to this story than meets the eye, it doesn’t matter. Will it matter to you if he did it longer than 2003? Will you look at him any differently if you knew he was doping into his Yankee years? What will change about your opinion or where he stands in your eyes today from this past Saturday morning?

Nothing will. He will forever be this tarnished athlete with this blemish. But unlike Bonds and Clemens and Pete Rose who had the misfortune of having their reputations destroyed after their playing days or as their careers were dying down, he still has nine more years on a guaranteed contract to right what a few calculated steps did to destroy it all.

I believe that when all is said and done, and when his time comes for the Cooperstown call, he will get in. He will be accepted for his phenomenal play and nothing more. He won’t be loved. He will merely be accepted. He will play his years like a sentence and then vanish like he once said in an interview. He will vanish but not before gaining the acceptance of his peers; something he so desperately seeks.

Its sad really because now we have nobody to break records legitimately anymore. Its also sad because now Jose Canseco is truly relevant. Its sad because underneath it all, Alex Rodriguez is not human like we were applauding him for. But not because he’s super human but because he’s a robot, programmed only to do as his master tells him. Its anybody’s guess where his career goes from here, but I’ll tell you one thing, I hope it gets better. Because if its one thing this country loves more than kicking you while its down, is seeing a once proud man get back on his feet.