owlcroft: What you're saying is that because steroids supposedly don't help in the game, we should overlook the sins of the players who use them. The flaw in your thinking is that what the law punishes, along with criminal acts, is intent, and A-Roid's intent was to cheat. In this case, whether the drugs he used actually helped his game is immaterial. His intent was to violate the rules of the game for his own advantage, and to lie repeatedly about it, so he is guilty of a punishable offense.
STARR GAZING
A-Rod’s Turn
Other Yankees have faced this moment. But Alex Rodriguez doesn't appear to have learned from them.
Feb 18, 2009
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It has become a familiar ritual of spring training in Tampa: a New York Yankees star tries to set the record straight about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. It may be a confession or an apology, or both, or not really either.
Jason Giambi went first, back in 2005. He said "sorry" so many times he wore the word out, but remarkably never said what he was sorry about. (We, of course, already knew because leaked grand-jury transcripts in the BALCO case had revealed that he had used a panoply of illegal drugs.)
Last year was Andy Pettitte's spotlight moment and he detailed his drug use and his regrets for almost an hour and in such revealing and self-lacerating fashion that it was almost more than reporters could bear.
But now those seem like off-off-Broadway productions. This year, after revelations that he took steroids during three seasons with the Texas Rangers, it was Alex Rodriguez's turn for a center-stage solo. And like almost every public moment involving A-Rod, it was remarkable. Most remarkable was how he failed to admit any true wrongdoing, was decidedly short on the apologies and, ultimately, made his misadventures the centerpiece of a plea for every kid to go to college in order to get a chance to grow up.
You see, Alex, sadly, never went to college with "an opportunity to grow up at my own pace." As a teen he passed on a University of Miami scholarship to sign with the Seattle Mariners on his way to becoming the highest-paid player in baseball history. Never mind that he was already in his mid-20s when he jumped to the Rangers and says he began to use steroids. During those three seasons in Texas, when he was injected with a substance that, in 2003, resulted in a positive test for a banned substance, he was "young," "naive," "an idiot," "ignorant," "irresponsible," but apparently not—in his own mind then or now—a cheat.
Rodriguez offered some new details, however sketchy, of his … I guess he'd prefer we call it a "stupid mistake." He said a cousin, whom he chose not to identify, obtained an over-the-counter drug in the Dominican Republic—one reputed to provide an "energy boost." The same cousin, according to Rodriguez, would inject him with it a couple of times every six months. A-Rod insists he never knew exactly what he was taking, exactly how he should take it, what effect it had or whether it was illegal. His only acknowledgement that he had an inkling that he'd crossed some line was his wink-and-a-nod remark: "I knew we weren't taking Tic Tacs."
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