Conspiracy? No Way A-Rod

Today’s column on Larry Brown Sports started out with a similar theme baseball fans have grown all-too used to. “Alex Rodriguez is having trouble understanding.” This theme is not new to people who follow Major League Baseball. After all, A-Rod always seems to have trouble understanding.

He doesn’t understand why Mariners fans hate him. He doesn’t understand why Rangers fans hate him. He doesn’t understand why Red Sox fans hate him. He doesn’t understand why Yankees fans hate him. He doesn’t understand why his own teammates hate him. He didn’t understand what he was taking, and he didn’t understand why people hated him after Selena Roberts’s story came out that he had indeed used performance-enhancing drugs. He never understood how to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

And now, Alex Rodriguez doesn’t understand the latest New York Times report that he used steroids after his admission. Most importantly, The New York Daily News has reported that he thinks it’s a conspiracy; he thinks Major League Baseball and the New York Yankees are out to get him.

Out to get you, Alex? Conspiracy? There’s no conspiracy here, and I’ll tell you why.

First of all, no report linking you to steroid use has ever lacked credibility. Selena Roberts of Sports Illustrated and the Miami New Times are nothing if not believable. If Selena Roberts was right, what makes you think the Miami New Times isn’t? They have documents to back up their story and were meticulous in making sure their facts were straight before publishing it. Credible sources, credible stories.

Secondly, if A-Rod had never been dishonest this wouldn’t be as believable, and we could see a possible conspiracy with the contract that Rodriguez has. But this is a guy who has controversy after controversy associated with his name. After all, he did lie to Katie Couric the first time about steroids, then later admitted to it only because a story had come out and the roof caved in. How are we to know that this isn’t a cycle? He’s not Bagwell or Pujols, this isn’t isolated.

Lastly, this can’t be a conspiracy because if Major League Baseball or the Yankees wanted to dig dirt or start a controversy like this, don’t you think they would’ve gone to someone other than the Miami New Times? The New Times does not even have a sports section on the top bar of its’ page. It doesn’t cover Major League Baseball, or sports in general. It found the Biogenics company and talked to former employees of Anthony Bosch, a real distributor of performance enhancers. If MLB or the Yankees wanted to start something like this, they would have gone to ESPN or Sports Illustrated to break this story. People would have a much higher propensity to read and buy into a story from a sports news source, but instead a regular news company broke the story, and broke it on their own.

In conclusion, there is no conspiracy in the Alex Rodriguez case. The only one who misled us is Alex Rodriguez himself, and that’s something that he will have to deal with the rest of his career and will cost him a Hall of Fame induction. Calling b.s. is only going to dig him a deeper hole.