Page 2.5: Ruminating on A-Rod's 'roids

By Natalie Clericuzio and Casey Michel     2/12/09 6:00pm

Surprise at Alex's 'roid use totally unfounded

Natalie ClericuzioIn case you haven't heard, a report came out Saturday that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for anabolic steroid use in 2003.

And you're surprised because.?

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I get it. He's the guy with the ridiculous contract that's going to pay him multi-million-dollar bonuses when his home run total ties Willie Mays', Babe Ruth's and Hank Aaron's. He was going to save baseball from Barry Bonds, the home run king with the proverbial asterisk tattoo.

Honestly, though, didn't anyone think it was slightly suspicious that A-Rod was always so buddy-buddy with Barry Bonds? Even when every other baseball player would rather have been accused of befriending the Unabomber, Rodriguez could always be found palling around with Bonds.

Or what about when Jos? Canseco suggested that Rodriguez wasn't totally clean? Granted, Canseco comes off as about as trustworthy as a used car dealer, but there are definitely other players he could have implicated who would have fallen further from grace than Rodriguez. Derek Jeter, anyone?

How about the plain fact that although the use of steroids without a prescription has been illegal in Major League Baseball since 1991, there were no penalties for it in 2003, the year A-Rod was tested? And that at that time Rodriguez was being paid more than any other professional player in any sport? And that he's never been one to deal well with pressure to perform? And the fact that everybody and his brother were using steroids in baseball in 2003?

Rodriguez himself, in his admission to Peter Gammons on Feb. 9, stated "I got caught up in this 'Everybody's doing it' era, so why not experiment with X, Y and Z?"

For those reasons alone, it pretty much only makes sense that Rodriguez would be using them. He had nothing to lose in 2003, when steroid testing was supposed to be completely anonymous. The tests in which A-Rod tested positive for anabolic steroids were done only to see if five percent of those players tested were using. They were, and in 2004, testing with penalties started in the pros.

In fact, if the players' union had destroyed the test results to preserve their anonymity, like they were supposed to in the first place, Alex's steroid use would still be between him and his supplier.

So really all these leaked test results do is confirm what you should have already assumed: yet another high-profile baseball player, perhaps the biggest of them all, used steroids. Perhaps steroid use really is just as widespread as many of us have feared. As the rest of the results from these 2003 tests become public, I doubt Rodriguez will be the only player receiving unwanted limelight.

What I am surprised about is how many sportswriters are indicting baseball as a sport after this new proof that its greatest player used steroids.

Do not misinterpret me: I do not condone the use of steroids. The fact that steroid use was so commonplace in baseball over the past 20-odd years is extremely unfortunate. However, I also do not believe that this will be the downfall of baseball as we know it. Or that this renders anything accomplished in the last 20 years in baseball empty and pointless.

These years of widespread steroid use are just that: a steroid era. The playing field was one in which players used steroids with equal availability. We know the use of steroids was likely the norm rather than the exception if even the game's best player thought using a little something to get ahead might not be such a big deal.

Without penalties in place by the league for using "banned substances" the substances could not have actually been banned. Honestly, how many people would choose not to do something to help them get ahead in their profession if there were no penalty? Bans without penalties are worthless, as baseball has seen and now has worked to correct.

Really and truly, the only player left I would be shocked to learn used steroids is Jeter. There are probably dozens of other ballplayers who are just as upstanding as Jeter, but few with as much to gain as The Captain. Jeter's claim to fame has always been hitting for the average, and in recent years, even that has been difficult. While steroids would not have improved his swing, maybe they would have upped his power, thus diversifying him as a player. In fact, many experts have speculated had Barry Bonds not used steroids, he would have had stats very similar to Derek Jeter's.

But that's not what happened. Bonds, like A-Rod and others, used steroids. It helped some, it hurt others in the long run (see Jason Giambi). With more stringent testing, you'd have to be an idiot to use steroids in today's game. Now, hopefully, that period is behind us.

With stakes as high as they are in professional baseball, though, I'm not holding my breath.

Natalie Clericuzio is a Wiess College sophomore.

Rodriguez no longer able to be baseball's savior

Casey Michel

When I first heard the news that Alex Rodriguez used steroids, there was nothing but shock. The report triggered a San Andreas fault-line straight through my aorta; it created a blow to the gut that could have turned Lennox Lewis into a pile of mush.

Shock. Clear and sharp, painful and wrenching.

All of this surprise, all of this reverberation, wrought by a man whose transgressions should have been limited to blonde bimbos and Material Girls.

Years ago, I acquiesced to the fact that my childhood love, baseball, turned out to be smoke, mirrors and a whole lot more. The teams I grew up with were laboratories, comprised of dishonest DH's and petulant pitchers all searching for an improper edge.

We all know the names. We all know their transgressions. Mark McGwire was the original villain, duping us first and cutting us the deepest. Roger Clemens was the angriest man this side of Christian Bale, a "clear" aftereffect of his usage. And Barry Bonds was despised, sick with jealousy, so his guilt was sealed long before the underpinnings of his game were revealed.

America had no problem condemning these traitors to history, these thieves of a nation's loyalty. They were disreputable bunch, and their punishments more than fit their crimes.

But Alex Rodriguez was clean. He was a prodigy, a five-tool player who resembled Bonds' early mold but checked his envy at Derek Jeter's door. His power was uncompromised, lean and fit where McGwire was bulging and doughy. And while his cuckolding was unbecoming, his misbehavior landed him a relationship with a crypt-keeper named Madonna, an unenviable duty that even he didn't deserve.

Sure, I hated the guy. I couldn't stand the dispassion he displayed, his willingness to act as a mercenary rather than a man. I took solace in the fact that he'd never won a World Series. I grinned amidst the flurry of Monopoly money that greeted his returns to Seattle's Safeco Field.

That was then. This, unfortunately, is now.

When I view A-Rod, A-Fraud, A-Roid, there will no longer be enmity flowing through my veins. Instead, there will be the chunks of concrete that have crumbled from baseball's foundation, obliterated by a 2003 test whose results should never have been revealed to SI.com.

And yet they were. And now we're stuck with the realization that America's pastime will never have the comfort of continuity that it long provided.

Bringing the past into the present, creating the ties and relationships that only Marty McFly could experience, was always the greatest part of baseball. Achievements were cemented in decades, battered by wars and economic slumps, surviving our lineage and allowing comparison between the generations. These numbers created epics. Babe Ruth has a heartier following than Barack Obama; Cy Young's name will live on long after David Petraeus passes; Willie Mays and Hank Aaron will inspire more people than the Jonas Brothers ever could.

As a child, I was one of those in awe of the numbers. I remember lying in bed, paging through my book of "100 Greatest Baseball Moments," soaking up the grainy images of a time long past. My history teachers could not reach me in the way that these recountings could. I imagined where the current teams, rife with power, met their previous counterparts and smiled with the knowledge that we could measure time based on wins, losses, and everything in between.

This makes what Alex Rodriguez did inescapable. As much as I hate to say it, I was cheering for Rodriguez to continue his trek to 762 home runs. He would be the savior that reconnected the passage severed by steroids. His talents were natural. His monetary greed was unfortunate, but his achievements, fashioned during an era of uncertainty, could at least be held to a higher standard.

Perhaps I was na've. Perhaps I refused to give up the slice of childhood belief that lingered when I watched baseball, keeping me steadfastly convinced that one day Rodriguez would wipe the slate of Bonds' stain. Perhaps I had too much faith in the goodness of an era, the belief that someone other than Ken Griffey Jr. was also clean.

But after last Saturday, any faith I harbored is gone, replaced by callousness and sorrow. We can never see how far we've come. We had already given up on the realities of McGwire, Bonds, and Clemens, resigned to the fact that their careers were embroiled in shadows and sideways glances. Alex Rodriguez now joins this unholy bunch, creating a Mt. Rushmore of malfeasance.

I can only hope that, someday, this mountain of deceit crumbles in the same shocking manner that baseball's history has. Until then, though, the burns will remain. And my faith in my sport - our sport, America's sport - will be no more.

Casey Michel is a Brown College junior.

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