“A-Roid” Tainted Too

Yesterday, Alex Rodriguez was a 33-year-old superhero on pace to shatter baseball’s record book.

Today, he is the latest – and by far the greatest – casualty in a steroids scandal that has shattered America’s faith in its national past-time.

Here is the shocking story that has turned the sports world upside down, from Sports Illustrated …

In 2003, when he won the American League home run title and the AL Most Valuable Player award as a shortstop for the Texas Rangers, Alex Rodriguez tested positive for two anabolic steroids, four sources have independently told Sports Illustrated …

Wow … talk about the ultimate “say it ain’t so …”

When approached by an SI reporter on Thursday at a gym in Miami, Rodriguez declined to discuss his 2003 test results. “You’ll have to talk to the union,” said Rodriguez, the Yankees’ third baseman since his trade to New York in February 2004. When asked if there was an explanation for his positive test, he said, “I’m not saying anything.”

Rodriguez was accused of using steroids in December, 2007 by former major league player Jose Canseco, charges Rodriguez denied in a nationally-televised interview on 60 Minutes.

“No,” he responded flatly to Katie Couric asked if he had ever used steroids, human growth hormone or any other performance-enhancing substance.

Also, Rodriguez’s name did not appear in the 2007 Mitchell Report, which implicated Roger Clemens and dozens of other top major league players as steroid users.

And yet now, literally overnight “A-Rod” has become “A-Roid,” and a sure-fire Hall-of-Fame career has been assigned a Scarlet Letter that will most likely keep Rodriguez out of Cooperstown forever … no matter how many home runs he hits.

And he’ll still need to hit them, obviously, as $30 million of his ten-year, $305 million contract with the New York Yankees is contingent on him breaking fellow steroid user Barry Bonds’ “record” of 762 career home runs.

But will anyone still pay to see A-Rod play anymore? Particularly if he’s going to engage in the same evasion game that everybody seems to resort to when they’re busted trying to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors?

“You’ll have to talk to the union???”

“I’m not saying anything???”

Unbelievable.

There is truly no joy tonight in Mudville, Gotham or thousands of small towns across the nation in which kids worshiped Rodriguez as one of the good guys in a sport gone bad.

Yesterday, he was in the process of setting records that would stand forever … today he’s forever tainted.

And he may have just brought baseball down with him …

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