A-Rod Mans Up—Let's Move On Already, This Stuff is Boring

I can’t believe I’m writing about steroid use in baseball. The media circus that has surrounded the whole issue has been nothing short of embarrassing. It is almost exclusively sensationalist bulls**t geared to satisfy the same American bloodlust and insipid moralizing that kept the Bush Administration in the White House for eight years.

Mark McGwire’s brother coming out and ratting on him last month may well be the least interesting news item I’ve ever come across. However, I feel that it’s worth throwing it out there that the witch hunt’s latest victim, the great Alex Rodriguez, should be commended for the way he is handling himself throughout the ordeal.

At this point, a revelation that any given baseball player used steroids at some in the past 20 years is only interesting to someone if they are an idiot. I distinctly remember rampant jokes about steroid use in baseball on The Simpsons and Weekend Update back in the early 1990s. Jose Canseco’s shitstorm of a memoir, Juiced…, is already four years old.

This is not a new or particularly compelling topic by any measure; we have known about this for a long time already. Yet every time another player gets busted for having used what is now a banned substance, the media reacts as if they were caught with a Klan hood in their travel bag.

At this point, I don’t even think that it is the public that is interested in steroid abuse; I think that this is another example of the drawbacks of the 24-hour news cycle and media outlets’ need to provide constant content.

Since reports of A-Rod’s failed test surfaced on Friday, ESPN.com alone has published dozens of articles about the matter, compiling stories with headlines such as “Game's History Destroyed,” “Baseball’s Last Hope Is Gone,” and “A Legacy Destroyed,” on an “A-Rod: ‘I Took A Banned Substance’ landing page.

The attention ESPN and other news outlets are paying to the latest chapter in the steroid saga isn’t informing people of anything, it’s just perpetuating the idea that this is a big deal. Does the public really need multiple columns from Jason Stark hack about what it means that this one particular player took a particular substance no less than five years ago?

For nearly the entirety of his career, A-Rod has been on a short list of players who could conceivably be considered the best player in baseball. The others, Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols, have also been accused of abusing performance-enhancing drugs at some point in their careers. 42 others who have played in the major leagues have been suspended for having tested positive for banned substances.

Additionally, scores of others are acknowledged to have used PEDs as well, including McGwire, Canseco, Wally Joyner, Jason Giambi, Roger Clemens, and the late Ken Caminiti. The point it, what difference does it make at this point? Again, we already know that this was going down. There is no reason to be surprised that any given player is guilty of having done this.

A-Rod is one of the few players to man up and say in so many words, “Yeah, I did it. That’s what was going on; it was the culture of the time. I’m sorry I did it and I don’t do it anymore.”

Major League Baseball has acknowledged that this was an issue and has since put measures in place to curtail it. Anything that happened regarding PED use in the years before the current drug-testing system was put in place is moot; it already happened, your favorite player was probably guilty of it and now it’s done.

Let’s leave it alone and move on. Aren't you bored of this already?