“The truth will set you free”

Alex Rodriguez is a liar. I have known this since he was free agent after the 2000 season. All I heard about for weeks was how much Arod wanted to play for the Mets and return to his home town team. That wasn’t completely true and neither was his confession about his steroid use yesterday. I don’t blame Arod for not being completely honest but I think we should expect more truthful details from guilty athletes.
The only decision that former Mets general manager Steve Phillips ever made that I completely agreed with was openly withdrawing from signing Arod after the 2000 season. Alex and his agent spent weeks proclaiming the Mets as Arod’s first choice to continue his career. They failed to mention that he would need 25 million a year, along with a hotel sweet on all road trips, a box for his family and friends at Shea and a place to land his helicopter for this to happen. I don’t have a problem with greedy, selfish ball players as long as they don’t try to pass themselves off as team oriented individuals. I am not naïve and I can relate to guys that want to maximize their income over the short period an athlete’s career last. I am also not stupid and I would appreciate at least a veiled attempt to deceive me.
Arod’s alleged apology yesterday was a complete farce and I have found it extremely entertaining but far from truthful. Alex looked right in between the camera and Peter Gammons eyes and lied to everyone watching. He admits to taking “performance enhancing substances” but has “no idea what I took”. He goes on to mention GNC 5 times, as if Primobolan can be purchased at GNC. Primobolan is one of the most expensive and least traceable steroids that money can buy; it is not available with a doctor’s prescription and Arod claims the first time he heard of the word “Primobolan” was this past Sunday. Arod blames his cheating on “the culture of the time” as if he were a hippie of the 1960’s defending his acid habit. He did say he was sorry, really, really sorry and called himself stupid a number of times. I believe he is sorry he was caught and sorry and stupid for going on 60 minutes to claim he never even considered taking performance enhancing substances. Yesterday Arod did admit he lied to 60 minutes but he claimed he wasn’t being honest with himself so how could he possibly be honest with CBS. Ha! Please make more of an effort to mislead me.
The sad thing for me is the positive media coverage of this alleged apology. It is commonly reported that Giambi and Petite are prime examples that apologizing and admitting your mistake is the best way to handle being caught cheating with steroids. Many reporters have commended Arod for his admission of guilt and that he was wise to follow the lead of his Yankee teammates. I agree Arod took a similar route as Giambi and Petite but honesty had nothing to do with any of these somewhat informative admissions. Jason Giambi did apologize but he never said for what he was sorry. We were to assume he meant ‘roids but he never said he did steroids. As vague as Giambi’s apology was at least it came across as more sincere than Andy Petite’s condescending, back handed apology for using HGH once. Andy admitted to using HGH a second time a few weeks later which he didn’t apologize for but apparently that was his father’s fault. I am not sure if the elder Mr. Petite has apologized publicly.
Maybe I am being unrealistic but I want one of these culpable baseball player’s to be honest. I want to hear they took steroids to get better and make more money. Arod has signed the two largest contracts in the history of baseball; steroids are at least partly responsible. If we can not get more forthcoming confessions from our guilty athlete’s, can we at least stop praising them for continuing to cheat us with their lies and half-truths?