FanNation - The Republic of Sport

If you've ready any of my Yankees related posts in the past, you'll know I'm not ARod's biggest fan. He seems far too manufactured, and the guy on the stat sheet doesn't always seem to be the guy that you're watching in a game. I think several of my fellow Yankees fans would say something similar if not the exact same thing. I will give him credit for his interview with Peter Gammons yesterday. It was as slickly produced as any ARod moment, so no doubts much of what Alex said was scripted and rehearsed. But, he took the Andy Pettitte route and owned up to the mistake, which is something that many "outed" players have not done. That alone is worthy of a little admiration. I spent most of Sunday reading various articles on the subject, and tuned in the ESPN radio station from NYC yesterday to hear what was being said in a more Pro Yankee part of the world. During my drive home, I sampled some of the thoughts from the local sports radio stations here in Chicago. Something I heard consistently in both markets -- and it is something that is really starting to annoy me -- is all the talk over who else is included in the 102 names we don't know. These names are going to come out -- don't doubt that for a minute. I continue to fear that eventually we'll be looking at a player that really will "hurt" my personal rooting interests. To date, the closest we've come to that are Pettitte and Rick Ankiel, and in both cases, it seems like bad judgment for two guys that were struggling to come back from injury. I can at least work up a little sympathy. The two names that would really ruin things for me are Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols. I assume at some point between now and the eventual release of the remaining names that we'll hear that Albert is on the list. I can only hope that, as in the past, that proves to be false when the official list comes out. But back to my point on getting tired of hearing radio hosts spout names -- I heard Max Kellerman damn the St. Louis Cardinals teams of the last decade because LaRussa has a history of managing users, Pujols is huge and Rolen and Edmonds are guys that were good, became awesome and are now breaking down. That isn't all quite true. Yes, LaRussa managed the A's with Canseco and McGwire. He's tiptoed around the subject the way all managers have. Pujols looks the part, although I will point out that he looked like that in low A ball when he played for the Peoria Chiefs. But Edmonds and Rolen are a bit unfair. Edmonds numbers improved when he became a Cardinal, but you could argue that some of that has to do with the lineup around him which was better than any team he played for in California. Rolen was EXACTLY the same player with the Cardinals as he was with the Phillies. If you look up his numbers on baseball-reference.com, you'll see that it has only been the last few injury plagued years that his numbers have dropped off. Both guys are on the wrong side of 30, so while I wouldn't bet my next paycheck on the fact that they are both clean, there really isn't much more to suggest that these guys were doping than for any other player. So why single them out? Later in the day, I heard one of my least favorite Chicago radio personalities, Harry Teinowitz, squawking about Vlad being on the juice. OK, I know he fits the profile, but c'mon -- there is just no need to throw the name out there. These guys get paid to talk and being controversial is part of the job description. But if ARod has shown us anything, it is that you can't spot the users just based on physical appearance. ARod's a big guy, and is bigger now than his days in Seattle, but if you polled 10 people before this story came out, I would guess that at least 7 would have said the guy was clean.