A-Rod Acts Better Than Other Steroid Users, Is Treated Worse
At the bottom of Olney's latest post, he drops this little nugget of insight:
If you really think about it, what A-Rod said -- and hasn't said -- puts him in basically the same place as just about every person who has addressed this topic, from the players to the guys in the suits. He didn't seem completely open, he didn't seem fully accountable.
Yes, Buster, that's true. What A-Rod's done is pretty much no different from the other players and the amount he opened up about it is no different from other players or executives.
This, of course, explains why he's being crucified so much harder.
Why is the media so angry about A-Rod lying about steroid use? Isn't this, you know, expected behavior by now?
In the conversation with Katie Couric, she asked if he'd ever done steroids, and he said no. At that point nobody suspected him and the only evidence he'd ever done it was supposed to have been destroyed. Does anyone really think he should have said "Yup, but only for a few years, no big deal." Would anyone on earth have said that? If you were being questioned on national television and were asked a question like that, with the knowledge that a) everybody thinks the answer is no, b) there's no evidence that you did it, and c) people who are even accused of this crime are fucking crucified in public ... well, would you admit it? Or would you say what you're supposed to say and get the H out of Dodge, as it were? Exactly.
Then the "destroyed" and "anonymous" evidence surfaces. A-Rod admits it's true. This is, um, what the media wants, right? That explains why they're so angry about it.
A-Rod answers some questions from Peter Gammons and isn't completely open and truthful, and doesn't offer further information beyond the questions Gammons had asked. Since this is such a massive departure from the behavior of everyone else implicated in the steroid issue, the media decided to get ridiculously pissed off. To the point where ESPN has essentially stopped reporting on anything baseball-related that doesn't have the "word" "A-Rod" in it (or some hilarious pun involving "Roid" or "Fraud" which make me laugh every time).
So, since everyone was pissed that he wasn't more open and didn't offer more tidbits of information, he held a press conference in which he offered more information than any other player who's embroiled in the steroid mess. He was then crucified for some of the information being different from the lies he told Gammons the previous week. Well for shit's sake, guys, you yelled that he was lying and that you wanted the truth, and now you're pissed that the truth is different from the lie? Seriously?
I think it's about time everyone stops Chicken-Littling this just because it's A-Rod. He was the best player in the league before he did drugs, he was the best player in the league while he was doing them, and he was the best player in the league after he stopped. Doesn't this kind of indicate that maybe "taking steroids" doesn't automatically mean you're a Canseco-esque fraud of a player?
Posted by Sean Schulte at 2009-02-20 12:02:44
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