Have you seen Pete in those recent Muenchen’s furniture store ads? Oy, they are so cringe worthy, with Pete in a fedora and that awful striped dress shirt, untucked and buttoned all the way up.
Yeah, that’s a Western Hills boy for you.
I wish MLB would get serious with this stuff. Ban A-Rod for life. Reinstate Maris as the single season HR record holder, and Aaron as the career HR leader.
From reading the comments of several players, they are also tired of this shit. They are tired of their union standing up for the cheaters because it tarnishes their reputations and achievements.
Spare me your “East Coast bias” bullcrap! :rolleyes: Just because you cheer for a team that hasn’t been competitive this century doesn’t give you license to bitch and moan about good teams. This isn’t a rule either, but it should be!
The proposed ban is pretty serious.
This doesn’t work on a lot of levels- starting with the fact that nobody would take it seriously. On a more practical level, MLB is not the NCAA and I don’t think they pretend to have the ability to rewrite their own record books. And of course, as people have pointed out a million billion times, Aaron has admitted he used amphetamines.
He’ll be playing tomorrow night I guess. It sounds like MLB decided to punish him for PED offenses and not in a more general “best interest of the game” way, perhaps because they weren’t sure it would stand up to appeal or in court. Tomorrow he’ll be suspended through the end of 2014 but he can keep playing while he appeals.
Another possible reason is a drug ban would allow them to keep testing him while he is suspended, while the best interests has no such provision.
That would be entertaining.
Well, A-Rod should be playing today, and my biggest question is “Why?”. Other than my Yankees are paying him dumpsters full of money, at this point I don’t see what he brings to the table. His stint in the minors was unimpressive and if he were 20 looking for a spot on the team, he’d would have been lucky to make the September roster. Hank, Hal, Brian, and Joe should all say “Let him get splinters - he’s a late inning pinch hitter at best.” Or keep him in the minors. Hank or Hal, whichever one decided to extend A-Rod’s contract, should pay the money out of his personal account and not penalize the Yankees’ bottom line for his stupidity.
I’ve never been a baseball fan. Heck, I only recently became a football watcher. I’d be in a fix if I were sent back to WWII and had to prove I’m American by saying who won the World Series! Still, this A-Rod stuff is hard not to hear about.
I’m naïve enough to believe in fair play. (An anti-American attitude, I know; but still…) I don’t think this A-Rod person (does he actually have a real name?) should have been allowed to go as far as he has. I heard on NPR last week that he wants a shorter suspension, and that the Baseball Commissioner (?) says ‘Take the suspension we give you, or we’ll ban you for life.’
How about a compromise? Issue a suspension equal to one game for every game he was probably doped? (And is he the one with the home run record? If so, he should be stripped of that.)
Because he can’t be any worse than the shitshow they’ve had at third base all year. This blog post is a month old but at the time it was written, Yankees third basemen were last in the AL in home runs and near the bottom of the majors in slugging.
Exactly. As poor as his performance has been in the past two years, he’s still a better option than the guys in there right now. And they’re going to pay him the money if he’s playing, so you might as well get some ROI.
And as to fair play, he’s used up all his good will. He’s a selfish, lying, admitted cheater, who after being caught and fessing up continued to use PEDs, obstruct the MLB investigation, and refuse to admit anything else in order to keep getting a paycheck. I have no sympathy for the Yankees, who signed his contract with their eyes open. And I have no sympathy for ARod. I wish somehow the Yankees have to pay the money but it goes to charity instead of ARod. That seems like justice.
I don’t know what you are talking about. I’m a lifelong Yankee fan. It’s just wrong to be a fan of both teams in maybe the biggest rivalry in sports. It’s like being both a Giants fan and an Eagles fan. Or an Ohio State and Michigan fan. Or rooting for the Union and the Confederacy in the Civil War. It’s just wrong.
“Probably”? Determined by whom?
Does anyone else have a bit of a problem with all this? I hate the Yankees as well as A-Rod - but he hasn’t failed a drug test yet, has he (I mean other than the Mitchell Report one)? The same goes for Ryan Braun’s suspension - we have a very solid drug policy in place - why isn’t Selig abiding by it? I have an open mind here - someone convince me this is the right thing for Selig to do.
Or rather they have to pay him whether he plays or not- until his suspension takes effect, that is.
I have no problem with baseball suspending people based on concrete evidence of drug use rather than failed drug tests. The whole point of cheating like this is that you try to beat the drug tests because there is no perfect test and people will always try to find ways to beat the system. I agree it’s possible to take issue with some of MLB’s conduct here, including their coercive lawsuit against Bosch.
He does not have any home run record. He was on pace to break the all time record earlier in his career until he started getting hurt.
I have little sympathy for him but his admitted PED use was from before baseball has been testing. He has never failed a drug rest. Their current case is based on the testimony of a scumbag that is being blackmailed into giving evidence. As little as I like Rodriguez I like this process even less.
Didn’t see this as I was posting. I have a problem with it too
Not quite. He did indeed tested positive during a “survey” test that came with no penalties. The test was supposed to be anonymous, but his name was one of the ones that was made public Then he admitted he’d used the drugs, but only in the period before testing.
His performance the past two years has actually been very good. It’s easy to look at him and see that he isn’t what he used to be, and think that you aren’t getting much out of him, but that isn’t the case at all. If the Yankees had traded for some unknown guy from the Marlins who hit .274/.357/.444 with 25 homers and good defense at third, that would be a big deal.
It’s just that comparing Alex Rodriguez to an average player is such a far cry from what you’re used to doing. Still, when he’s been on the field, he’s been well above-average offensively and well above-average defensively. Take WAR with as many grains of salt as you need to, but even with him missing about a third of the games, Fangraphs had him as the 75th most valuable position player in baseball the past two years, basically tied with Joe Mauer.
Damn…I used to think you were an okay guy and everything…I feel so violated!
As far as A-Rod goes, I think the douchiest thing by far that he’s done was after the first PED admission how he tried to portray himself as some reformed do-gooder, even going so far as to be associated with the Tyler Hooten Foundation, an anti-steroid group that educates children on the dangers of PED’s.
Way to disillusion a bunch of kids, jerk.
Selig can suspend a player for drug use based on evidence outside a positive test. Testing positively is NOT the one and only basis for a suspension; it’s just one of the (And the most structured) reasons the CBA allows for drug suspension. If MLB has some other solid evidence a player is cheating, they can suspend them.
What I find baffling are the “He should be banned for life!” calls. Why? If he cheated, punish him appropriately to the offense. I realize he’s an incredibly easily hated douchebag - in fact, me might be the most purely unlikeable athlete of my entire lifetime. But there’s no rule against being an orange-skinned douche.