Daily Archives: February 9, 2009

I bought it. Okay, I wanted to buy it, fair enough, but I thought Alex Rodriguez came off well in his sit down with Peter Gammons. He’s hard to take your eyes off. The guy who always gets it wrong. You want to see how he’ll screw it up this time, whether you are rooting for or against him. The golden boy as New York neurotic.

At first I thought he was wearing too much make up, but then saw that he just had a sunburn on his cheek bones, outlining the shape of where his sunglasses sit. With the camera locked in tight, Rodriguez gave Gammons a lot of direct eye contact, pursed his lips, furrowed his brow as he listened to a question, and was as self-aware as ever. He said the right things, and came across as being sincere more often than not.

Some people might still think he’s being phony. I can relate with that too. There were instances when he didn’t fully cop to what he did, where he side-stepped being direct and detailed. He started taking PEDS because he felt pressure in Texas; what about the pressure he faced when he came to New York?

Rob Neyer nails it over at ESPN:

He’s sorry he got caught. Everyone’s sorry when he’s caught. But you’re really sorry only if you think that what you did was wrong, and I don’t believe that any of these guys really believe they did anything wrong. A different culture five years ago? The culture today is exactly the same as it was five years ago. The only thing that has changed is the penalty for failing a drug test. If you want to know the culture, look no further than the ridiculous percentage of players who have a doctor’s note that allows them to take stimulants (under the guise of controlling their ADHD or whatever).

The culture is exactly what it’s always been: If you ain’t cheating, you’re not trying. And it ain’t cheating if you don’t get caught. Rodriguez tried, and now he’s been caught. The next step is damage control, full of apologies and admissions of youth and stupidity. (And, of course, it’s obvious that he’s now a mature and thoughtful adult.)

Asked whether the steroid use took place only from 2001 through 2003, Rodriguez responded, “That’s pretty accurate, yes.”

Pretty accurate? So maybe there was a little bit in 2000? What about 2004, and maybe just a dabbling in 2007?

Rodriguez also called Selena Roberts a “stalker” several times–a claim that SI has already refuted–and made some accusations about her that he’ll have to account for. He’s really going to be in the soup if he is lying her, that’s for sure.

Who knows if he’s being completely straight? It’s not like he turned into Henry Fonda or anything, but he was better than I expected. Then again, I wanted to like him, so I looked for the good stuff. Like always, there was plenty for everyone.

But as a fan, I won’t have a hard time rooting for him again.

Here is the entire transcript.

(You don’t say…)

When I first heard the news about Alex Rodriguez on Saturday, I sat down to write a blog post to express my initial reaction. I was emotional when I wrote the following:

I’m turned-off by how this story was reported–we’re talking about leaks from confidential documents. Why not release all of the names on the list? Why just Rodriguez? Color me cynical, I respect Selena Roberts as a veteran journalist, but I also know she’s got a book on Rodriguez coming out this summer. You can’t tell me that didn’t play at least a small part in all of this. Has she been sitting on the information waiting for the right moment to drop this bomb? I wish I knew. I don’t mean to discredit the story, but it’s hard to come away from it not feeling dirty.

Looking back, I was too hot to write soberly, and I was wrong to attack Roberts’ professionalism even if I was turned off by the fact that she has a book on Rodriguez coming out later this year. I know enough about the magazine business to know that she doesn’t decide what goes in the magazine and when. Moreover, I suggested that she sacrificed the truth for the sake of her book. If I was writing for a publication an editor would have called me to the mat: prove it. I can’t.

I could have written, “In wake of the fact that she has a book on Rodriguez that will appear in May, I will be interested to learn precisely how long she has had this information and why the story is being released at this time, because when a writer of a story stands to benefit financially through its release, such questions can speak of the veracity of the report.” Or something that that effect which would have been less accusatory, while making the same point.

So I want to apologize to Ms. Roberts for my half-baked critique. In the final analysis, I only made myself look like a fool. I also want to apologize to you, the reader. Because although this is a blog, where we often give a quick, emotional take on things, I am not in the business of character assination. And even when I’m worked-up I go to great lengths to be fair-minded and even-handed.

This whole mess brought out the worst in me too. And I owe to you and to myself to do a better job. I’m far from perfect but not too proud to admit to an error in judgement when I make one.

In an interview today with Peter Gammons of ESPN, Alex Rodriguez fessed up:

“When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day,” Rodriguez told ESPN’s Peter Gammons in an interview in Miami Beach, Fla. “Back then, [baseball] was a different culture. It was very loose. I was young, I was stupid, I was naïve. I wanted to prove to everyone I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time.

“I did take a banned substance. For that, I’m very sorry and deeply regretful.”

…”Overall, I felt a tremendous pressure to play, and play really well” in Texas, the New York Yankees third baseman said. “I had just signed this enormous contract I felt like I needed something, a push, without over-investigating what I was taking, to get me to the next level.

“I am sorry for my Texas years. I apologize to the fans of Texas.”

…Rodriguez also said of his 2007 interview with Katie Couric on “60 Minutes,” when he denied ever using steroids, that “at the time, I wasn’t being truthful with myself. How could I be truthful with Katie Couric or CBS?”

Rodriguez is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t but this is a good first step.

I’ve posted some version of this chart twice before, but now that the Yankees have wrapped up their arbitration cases, I thought I’d update it one last time, adding Andy Pettitte’s new deal and the 2008 dollars spent on LaTroy Hawkins, which I erroneously left out of my previous two bits of accounting.

Note that I’m assuming that Pettitte will achieve all of his bonuses (which he will if he stays off the DL and throws 210 innings). As for Hawkins, the Yankees traded him to the Astros at the trading deadline last year and picked up a “significant portion” of his remaining salary of the deal. In the absence of the specific numbers, I’m assuming they paid all of his $3.75 million salary last year. Most likely the bonuses Pettitte fails to reach (2009 dollars) will be balanced out by the portion of Hawkins’ 2008 salary paid by the Astros (2008  dollars). The chart doesn’t include service-time increases to pre-arbitration players such as Joba Chamberlain and the middle relievers, but those will likely total less than a million dollars.

all costs in millions of dollars; *estimated prorated portion of 2008 salary

So the end result of all of the Yankees’ offseason spending is a roughly $19 million increase in payroll. Of course, the Yankees have hidden that increase by shifting 14 million of the dollars owed to CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira this year into their signing bonuses, which the club doesn’t count as payroll, but I do (all figures above include any relevant portions of signing bonuses).

Here’s the result of that $19 million increase (ages as of April 15 in parentheses):

• Mark Teixeira (29) replaces Jason Giambi (38)
• CC Sabathia (28) replaces Mike Mussina (40)
• A.J. Burnett (32) replaces Carl Pavano (33)
• Xavier Nady (30) replaces Bobby Abreu (35)
• Nick Swisher (28) replaces Wilson Betemit (27)
• Damaso Marte (34)  replaces Kyle Farnsworth (33)

Not bad at all.

Since this off-season has been such a piece of science fiction, today’s news is brought to you by this:

So it seems this fellow named Alex Rodriguez put something in his body he wasn’t supposed to, and now folks think his performance at his job is tainted … let’s just list every relevant article:

• Jayson Stark thinks this is a huge blow to the legacy of the game:

Who knows what other names are lurking on that list of seized urine samples? Who knows whose career and reputation will be fed through the shredder in the next big scoop? And the next? And the next? …

How could baseball have allowed this to happen to itself? How? Can anyone recall any other sport that has ever committed such an insane act of self-destruction?

What compares to it? The Black Sox? This is worse. Game-fixing in college basketball? This is worse. Nominate any scandal in the history of sports. My vote is that this is worse. It’s not worse because it will cause massive numbers of people to stop watching or caring about baseball. Check the attendance. Check the revenue charts. People will come back. They’ve already come back. The sport, as a business, is doing great. But the sport, as a unique paragon of American culture, is devastated. And that’s forever.

• Howard Bryant writes about the legacy of the would-have-been HOFers, and also about the “leak” of A-Rod’s name:

The debate over the next few days undoubtedly will shift to the leak, to who spoke to Sports Illustrated and why. And why, if the anonymous source had access to the entire list, was Rodriguez the only person named? The legality of the leak should not be underestimated. Someone has compromised the confidentiality of an agreement. But these questions are important, although they aren’t as important as this fact: The full scope of the steroids era is coming into even clearer focus.

Don’t forget that the most important informant in American history — W. Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat — took down a president in part because he didn’t receive the promotion he wanted. Nobody complained then, because the information he leaked was legitimate.

For the same reasons, nobody should complain now.

• Buster Olney laments the opportunity lost through A-Rod’s actions:

Alex Rodriguez was supposed to be the guy who saved baseball, the way that Mark McGwire did in 1998. He was supposed to ride in and save the home run record from the clutches of suspected steroid user Barry Bonds. He was supposed to be the guy who would show that clean players could be just as prolific as the cheaters.

• Olney also wonders how A-Rod will respond publicly to inquiries about this matter:

But there’s one other destination for A-Rod, one more route: Honest and Open. He could talk about everything: what he did, when he did it, why he did, his regrets, his concerns, side effects, the benefits, the costs. This would be something very rarely seen in the steroid era — a time filled with thousands of mistakes by users, by union leaders, by the baseball commissioner and by baseball owners. And yet it’s a time of embarrassingly few specific, sincere admissions. Doing so would be the right thing. That could be part of A-Rod’s legacy as well.

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