The New York Yankees ownership and Major League Baseball will more than likely say goodbye to Alex Rodriguez as an active player on Friday. That will be the last time he will play a game for the New York Yankees although it is possible that Rodriguez could surface somewhere else. But it appears as of now, Rodriguez, who is 41 years of age, is finished. His legacy among baseball fans is that of a great talent who cheated. But there is far more to this story, the other side led by then Major League Baseball Bud Selig that will not be rehashed by the baseball media.
It was a weekly paper, not baseball, that busted Rodriguez along with a handful of others for using banned substances. The Miami New Times was suddenly strong armed by Major League Baseball which demanded reporters’ notes. On March 13, 2013, Chuck Strouse in an editorial told Major League Baseball off. “Sorry, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig. We won’t hand over records that detail the inner workings of Biogenesis, the controversial Coral Gables anti-aging clinic that allegedly supplied prohibited drugs to six players, including Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez.” Strouse went onto write about journalistic ethics. Major League Baseball may pitch itself as a slice of Americana but Major League Baseball and ethics will never be confused and should never be used in the same sentence. There were reports that Major League Baseball and Rodriguez’s camp tried to buy evidence from Biogenesis. Rodriguez served a yearlong suspension. Alex Rodriguez had a good year in 2015 and then like many other 40-year-old and over players in sports fell off the cliff and became an almost useless player. Major League Baseball and the Yankees franchise will close the books on Alex Rodriguez and an era of illegal drug usage by players, an era that Selig and the owners seemingly approved until they got caught.
By Evan Weiner for The Politics of Sports Business.
This article was republished with permission from the original publisher, Evan Weiner.