- Nobody questioned A-Rod’s performance when he was winning games and making money. Everybody loves a winner; nobody loves a loser. This is human nature, and rightly so. Folks with the ability to be more, do more, and accomplish more are those who most normal, healthy people gravitate towards. Winners and record breakers challenge us to “be” more, too; isn’t this inspiration why sports is such a big deal to begin with? In fact, isn’t this exactly what is expected from players that sign multi-million dollar contracts? In 2000, Alex Rodriguez signs a record-breaking $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers; by 2003, Rodriguez wins MVP and become the youngest player ever to hit 300 home runs. When Alex Rodriguez was breaking records and winning the World Series Championship years later, nobody questioned how he was doing it. He was a cash cow, and that’s all anybody cared about; as long as the money kept rolling in, he remained the darling of the MLB, the Yankees, and the fans. The questions and accusations didn’t start until after his performance began its slow descent from 2007 to 2012. THE TRUTH IS that suspending A-Rod would potentially save the Yankees $37.5 million in 2014 ALONE. THE TRUTH IS that this ‘scandal’ is all about the money, not about some marketed ‘integrity’ of the game; pull up your big boy pants and get over it. (read the facts in detail here)
It seems pretty obvious to me that the writing’s on the wall; eventually, even the sports world will have to join the rest of civilization and realize that as long as there are millions of dollars at stake, there will always be athletes willing to take a risk with PEDs in order to give their fans and their employers what they really want – the fastest, the strongest, the best. If the MLB continues to witch-hunt its star players after years of profiting from them as a means to renege on their contracts, they will open up an opportunity for a new kind of league to take over the baseball industry; one, perhaps, that allows every athlete to choose for themselves.
And I’m willing to bet that this new league will have a much greater following, because at the end of the day, human nature is what it is. And everybody loves a winner.
Poli-Soci commentary from the perspective of an innocent bystander.
Ok, maybe not that “innocent”… and not quite “standing by,” but you get the picture.
