The Story That Just Won't Go Away

Just bask in the greatness that this story could turn into. It seems that A-Rod is painted in a far less than flattering light in the upcoming book "A-Rod" by Selena Roberts, the Sports Illustrated writer who outed Alex Rodriguez as having failed major league baseball's drug screening tests in 2003 for use of testosterone and hyperbolin, an injected anabolic steroid.

Some of my favorite highlights from the article:

-- After A-Rod suddenly gained 15 pounds in the offseason between the 2004 and 2005 Yankee campaigns, Yankee teammates nicknamed him "Bitch Tits" in 2005 after he seemed to develop round pectorals, a condition called gynecomastia that can be caused by anabolic steroids.

-- An "unnamed major leaguer" as quoted as having seen Kevin Brown and A-Rod together with Human Growth Hormone in 2004.

-- Jose Canseco -- formerly thought to be no more credible than these ridiculous "unnamed major leaguer" sources, but who since has proven to be highly prescient in his beliefs and predictions about steroid use in baseball -- believes Rodriguez was using steroids in high school in Miami. Apparently, A-Rod put on 25 pounds of muscle between his sophomore and junior years, and "word was that his connection was a dog kennel owner". Various members of his high school team and relations to the coaching staff also allege the team knew of Rodriguez's use of steroids during his time on the high school team.

And then there is this one, by far my own personal favorite, which I'm just going to quote directly from the article because it's just too crazy to believe otherwise:

"In one shocking disclosure, the book accuses A-Rod of "pitch tipping" when he was with the Rangers - letting a friendly opponent at the plate know which pitch was coming in lopsided games. Rodriguez expected players he helped would do the same for him when he was having an off night and needed to get his batting average up and it wouldn't affect the outcome of the game."

Let's put aside the fact that A-Rod is going to have ten or eleven new assholes ripped for him all throughout this season, both inside and outside of New York, if he is shown to have lied again about steroids in claiming he only injected them from 2001-2003 in Texas, when in reality he may have been on the juice since his teenage years. The fact that he may have used both steroids in 2004 and 2005, and HGH in at least 2004, would be particularly damning in New York after Alex's insistence earlier this year that his Yankee years have all been clean (which I have never believed). But let's put all that aside for a minute here. If it's true that A-Rod (1) was so concerned about his own batting average late in meaningless games that have already been decided to even consider doing this, and (2) actually tipped pitches to opposing batters like that, I swear there are going to be some serious more fireworks still to come here in the Bronx.