IF ALEX RODRIGUEZ seriously wanted to draw a line under the A-Roid controversy and move on, then he struck out looking in the first inning in Tampa today.
A-Rod was given the chance to come clean in front of the assembled media and elaborate on his “loosey-goosey” interview with ESPN’s Peter Gammons a week ago.
Instead, he and the New York Yankees fudged the issue by staging a press conference that was nothing short of a sham.
By refusing to allow any follow-up questions from the reporters, the Yankees effectively enabled A-Rod to dodge every question and stick to the party line fed him by his agent, Scott Boras, and his PR advisors.
If A-Rod really believes this is the end of the matter, he’s living in cloud cuckoo land.
So many questions remain unanswered. Who was the cousin who supplied him with the steroids from the Dominican Republic?
Why did he continue taking steroids for three years, injecting himself twice a month on average, when he claims he couldn’t tell whether they were having any effect?
Can he possibly believe that he was doing anything other than cheating and how can we believe that he has not experimented with any other performance-enhancing drug since 2003?
Yankees star fouls off every question
Joel Sherman of the New York Post summed up A-Rod perfectly when he wrote in his column: “No one thinks about himself more and knows himself less.”
Sherman added: “Rodriguez projects a disingenuous quality that – perhaps more than anything – gives so many people a negative feeling about him.
“There is always a sense that Rodriguez is putting on a show; that he either is not in full touch with himself or that he is always running a con designed to fool you and elevate him.”
From the moment he opened his press conference by reading a prepared statement – a statement he clearly didn’t prepare himself – he came across as exactly that: disingenuous.
He was obviously told to keep repeating the “young and stupid” line and insist that all he wants to do is “move on” with his life.
Yes, it’s unfair that so far Rodriguez’s name has been the only one revealed of the 104 players who tested positive for PHDs in 2003.
Yes, the reporters should be knocking down the door of Major League Baseball and the Feds demanding to know how and why the news was leaked to Selena Roberts of SI.com.
But he owes it to himself and the paying public to provide honest and open answers to the many outstanding questions.
Until he does, he won’t be allowed a minute’s rest by the media, who will be seeking to further expose him as the A-Fraud he quite patently is.
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