I'm in!!!

Great minds...

Howard Herman, a sportswriter for the Berkshire Eagle, wrote this article about A-Rod a few days after I posted my own rant. It's written better than mine so I'll assume he didn't copy me.

Oh Enough Already

Hey, have you heard? Alex Rodriguez took steroids 6 years ago. So did over a hundred other players, but no one cares about that. Everyone cares that A-Rod did it because A-Rod is a superstar. If some journeyman pitcher or some scratch hitter got caught, it wouldn't be a big deal. But Alex did it so it's the collapse of baseball as we know it.

When Barry Bonds was accused, we weren't surprised. When Mark McGwire confessed, we were disappointed. When Jason Giambi sort of fessed up, no one cared. The jury's still out on Roger Clemens, but when Andy Pettitte admitted it, he was immediately forgiven. Now Alex Rodriguez has admitted it and he has been vilified by everyone from the guy at the corner newsstand to the President of the United States. If the death penalty were allowed for this, he certainly would have been sentenced to death. Bud Selig, Commissioner of Baseball, said that A-Rod "shamed the game." The other 103 players who tested positive in 2003 didn't shame the game. They just took steroids. But Alex Rodriguez? He took steroids! See the difference? Of course not. Well William Shakespeare said it best:

Much ado about nothing.

What's the big deal here? A-Rod's not the first player to test positive for steroids. Other superstars have been caught. So is it that A-Rod is an active player and guys like McGwire and Palmiero are retired? Well Pettitte and Giambi are active and no one's calling for their heads. Is it because he makes so much money? What do you care? It's not your money. Let the owners be mad. Maybe it's because he lied. After all, Pettitte confessed and everyone loved and admired him. A-Rod confessed but no one's forgiving him. He's certainly not the first person to do something wrong and then lie about it. Billions of people do that every day. So why is Alex Rodriguez being beat up like this? Everyone loved Michael Jordan. Then he got caught in a gambling thing. And what happened? Nothing! What about all the players who did drugs in the 80's? Minor suspensions and then all was forgiven. So why isn't A-Rod being forgiven? He's not running around denying it like Bonds and Clemens. Shouldn't we be moving on?

Forget that the results of A-Rod's test were supposed to remain anonymous under the agreement in 2003. Forget that someone leaked those confidential results. He tested positive. He denied it. Then he admitted it. Unless you're going to release the names of every player who has ever tested positive and then put them through the ringer, move on. You want to put asterisks next to the names of every player who set a record in the "Steroids Era"? Fine. Whatever. But A-Rod didn't do anything worse than hundreds of other players have already done. So back off already and let's play ball.