A-Fraud

While we're on the subject of athletes on dope....

We have a fraud listed as the Home Run King in major league baseball. We have a fraud who has been called one of the greatest pitchers of all time and a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame. Now we have A-Fraud (thanks Joe Torre!), Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, admitting to steroid use from 2001-2003 when he was with the Texas Rangers.

I'm no longer surprised when I hear that a professional athlete is caught using steroids. Especially when they go from looking like a wide receiver to looking like a linebacker in the span of a few years. That's a lot of push-up's, man. Rodriguez admitted to the steroid use today, a few days after the story was leaked. Here is what he had to say in an interview with Peter Gammons:

"When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day," Rodriguez told ESPN's Peter Gammons in an exclusive interview in Miami Beach, Fla.

"Back then, [baseball] was a different culture," Rodriguez said. "It was very loose. I was young. I was stupid. I was naive. And I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time."

Yep, there can certainly be a lot of pressure when you sign the richest contract in baseball - 10 years, $275 million. My Eau Claire public school math tells me that contract is worth $27.5 million per year over a decade. It's a hard life.

I'm sure those players with less God-given talent than Rodriguez, who didn't take steroids , felt no pressure. The players who "did it the right way" through hard work and without performance-enhancing drugs, felt no pressure. But, he had to be THE BEST. He had to be better than ALL of the rest - at any cost. The funny thing is - Alex Rodriguez probably had enough natural talent to be considered the best. Now, with this admission, that possibility is ironically thrown out the door.

Baseball has got two black-eyes, as far as I am concerned, when it comes to steroid use. On one hand, you have narcissistic players like Rodriguez who feel the need to cheat to "be the best." On the other hand, however, you have players who used steroids to simply "make the team." Such was the case with little-known Twins reliever Dan Naulty. I read this quote from Naulty a while back, and it really hit me:

Naulty, a former reliever for the Yankees and Twins, is haunted by his steroid use. He can't shake the thought of how many lives he affected with his choice to use the drugs. He thinks of the players whose jobs he took through his juiced-up performance.

"My choice has impacted hundreds of people," Naulty said in an interview with The Post.

The one person he thinks about the most is Mike Trombley. The two pitchers' lockers were next to each other in Twins spring training in 1996. They were competing for the last spot in the bullpen.

Near the end of spring training, Naulty was told he made the team, meaning Trombley was bound for Triple-A.

"He was the guy sitting there saying, 'Why is this happening?' " Naulty said. "I was throwing 96 [mph]. He threw 87-90, but they wanted 96 instead. There's no way I could have thrown 96 without drugs.

"When Mike Trombley gets sent to Triple-A, the dominoes fall all the way down to rookie ball where someone gets released. That's what has penetrated my soul."

The use of steroids has tarnished the game. It has thrown into doubt many of the records that have been set over the past 15 years. A-Fraud is just the latest case.

My hope is that The Grand Old Game can clean itself up and once again become the great game it was meant to be. Until then, we will always have Kent Hrbek .

Jeff