Why Did It Have to Happen?

By Jack Flynn
Posted Tuesday, February 10, 2009

I wish that Alex Rodriguez was a New York Met today.

That was the way it was going to work out, after all. Rodriguez was a free agent for the first time after the 2000 season and had expressed serious interest in playing for the team he claimed to have been a fan of while growing up in New York and in Miami. (Although with A-Rod, it can be a challenge to believe anything he says sometimes.)

It looked like a perfect match. The Mets had a hole at shortstop and needed to fill it with a superstar for so many reasons, perhaps not the least of which was to provide a worthy adversary for the guy who played the position across town. Rodriguez would’ve improved the Mets in every single facet of the game – at the plate, in the field and on the back pages.

Then came the “24-plus-1 nonsense,” and the “A-Rod Merchandising Tent” in left field nonsense. (Did the Yankees ever move some of the markers in Monument Park to make room for that tent?) The next thing you know, Rodriguez was donning a Texas Rangers cap and smiling for the cameras, and the Mets were throwing money at Kevin Appier to wipe the egg from their faces.

None of it ever had to happen.

Perhaps if Rodriguez has taken his place between second base and third base for the Mets, we would’ve never been subjected to the headlines of the past few days, and the news that another superstar baseball player has fallen victim to the siren song of steroid abuse.

The Sports Illustrated investigation that outed Rodriguez as a steroid user is just one more sordid chapter in the sad and complicated history of baseball’s last two decades. Using performance-enhancing drugs used to mean popping a little green pill when playing a day game after a night game. Today it is a sporting crime without comparison, one that comes with the shrill moral rebuke of the outraged masses who willingly pretend that their heroes “played the game right.”

I’m not here to bask in the “glory” of yet another New York Yankee being tainted by a performance-enhancing drug scandal, as I’m sure many Mets fans have been doing since the news broke. I’ve always been a fan of Alex Rodriguez – often to the confusion and derision of the people around me – and the thought he has added a permanent stain to his magnificent career saddens me to no end.

Rodriguez is truly baseball’s version of a Greek tragedy. He is perhaps the best player of his generation and will hopefully be remembered as an all-time great in the sport, regardless of what potions he may have used to remain at an elite level. He has been the ultimate five-tool player throughout his career, a fearsome slugger with no apparent weaknesses on the baseball field.

Rodriguez will always be remembered, however, for the tool he lacks – self-confidence. If we are to believe Rodriguez during his interview with Peter Gammons earlier this week, he began using steroids after joining the Texas Rangers in 2001 as a response to the pressure he felt to live up the record-setting contract he signed.

If that’s true, how can you not feel badly for a man so undeniably talented, but so incredibly insecure in himself that he resorted to drug use in the hopes of maintaining his level of performance?

The first seven years of Rodriguez’s baseball career compares favorably with any player’s in the history of the game. Why wasn’t it enough for him?

There’s no way to tell if Rodriguez is even telling the truth here, or if he has been using steroids since the day he stepped on a professional baseball field. There’s no way to know if things would’ve been different with the Mets, or if he wouldn’t have felt just as much pressure to live up to whatever contract he would’ve signed with New York.

If only we would’ve had the chance to find out.