#2 I lost a hero over the weekend, I'd be lying if I said I still viewed him in the same light. That's hard for me to write...
2007 was no question the greatest accomplishment I have ever seen by an athlete with my own eyes. I was fortunate to attend a ton of games that year and 75% of the time this man did something incredible, all the way up until the final game I attended that season... September 22, the Stadium was shaking as he continued to bring us back, inning after inning. I've always felt that A-Rod was misunderstood, a man who truly cared about the game and wanted nothing more than to be the best. People thought this meant stats only, no doubt he's very good at that, but looking into his eyes after every disappointing post-season you could see he truly wanted a World Championship. The only problem was he wanted and had to be the man to hit the walk off grand slam to win it. He's always put way too much pressure on himself and apparently it drove him to PEDs. Here's a man who already had 252 million dollars no matter how he performed, something I'll probably never see, even in 10 lifetimes. Still he felt as though he owed it to people to be above everyone, The Babe, Mick, and so on. Remarkably I see this as a good thing, fans believe A-Rod only cares about the money, but here he is admitting he felt as though he needed something extra to complete the contract he'd signed. Steroids and all other PEDs are inexcusable, but if you can take ONE good thing from this admission it should be that Alex does care about living up to his contract, probably too much.
At the end of the day I will still be one of the fans who loves him. He is truly an amazing athlete even without the steroids (after watching the interview twice I do believe him when he says he's been clean since 03). However I will no longer be able to tell my children that Alex Rodriguez was my hero. Heros do not cheat, even if they are naive. One final note and lots of people will probably shun me for this... after this weekend if Derek Jeter were named one day in steroid talk I wouldn't even blink. No name can surprise me anymore.
Side Note: I've long believed that Posada took something and was shocked when Andy was mentioned in the Mitchell Report and not him. His comments today do not look promising when responding to a question about himself being worried if he were named...
Posada said: "I think I've done things right. I don't think I've put anything in my body that could be positive on one of those tests."
YOU THINK, either you did or you didn't
My Point: A-Rod may be the biggest name, but there are lots more. Baseball was severely tainted from about 98-04
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