Major League Baseball suspended New York Yankees infielder Alex
Rodriguez for 211 games Monday. The 38-year old slugger was supposed to be the
sport’s golden boy when he bludgeoned baseballs as a 20-year old shortstop for
the Seattle Mariners in 1996.
Instead, he is suspended for his role in a performance-enhancing
drugs scandal that has enveloped the game for the last 15 summers.
People, and the sports media, can pretend to be a moral authority
and decry Rodriguez for combining his prodigious talents with PEDs. But they
should ask themselves this question: would you take a shortcut if the payoff
was a few hundred million dollars?
Rodriguez has the highest paid baseball player for each of the
last 13 seasons. He has earned more than $300 million in salary during his
career. If he indeed serves his suspension, which will encapsulate the entire
2014 season, Rodriguez will forfeit his $25 million salary. Nevertheless, according
to multiple media reports, he is owed another $61 million dollars after the
2014 season.
Friday, the same night Rodriguez told the press he believed the
Yankees and Major League Baseball were conspiring to keep him off the field, the
U.S. Department of Labor released its jobs figures for July. Most of the new
jobs created were either part-time or low wage positions that would leave
someone hovering around the poverty line. On the surface, neither seems to
be related. But, if you think about it a lot of those who are underemployed
would like a position that offered financial stability. If someone offered them
that stability—but told them they had to take an ethical shortcut—to get the
position, they would probably take it.
Rodriguez did something similar, take a shortcut to enhance his
career prospects, except there were many millions more at stake.
Baseball didn’t have an issue with the Steroid Era until a
reporter exposed the Emperor of American Sports was not wearing clothes. When
Associated Press sports writer Steve Wilstein spotted androstenedione in Mark
McGwire’s locker in August 1998 and reported on his findings he was vilified
by the St. Louis media, as well as others around the country.
It took years for Wilstein, and to a lesser extent former
outfielder Jose Canseco, to be vindicated for their claims about
performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.
(For context, Sammy Sosa drove in 158 runs, won the 1998 National
League MVP award and helped the Chicago Cubs win 90 games. Few remember they
were 12.5 games behind division winning Houston. St. Louis was a pedestrian
83-79 in 1998. In
games, McGwire hit a home run, the Cardinals won 35 of them for a .593 winning
percentage. Attendance that year jumped 3.5 percent, because the home run
chase between the two syringe-filled sluggers captivated the sport.)
Through Sunday, MLB averaged 30,616 fans per game. Through the
same number of home dates last year, the average attendance was 31,396. Neither
figure tops the average attendance of the strike-shortened 1994 season when, on
average, 31, 612 walked through the turnstiles at major league parks.
Five years before Rodriguez signed a 10-year $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers in 2001 there were eight teams in baseball that did not have a total payroll of $25 million.
Rodriguez took a gamble and got caught. Despite today’s media moralizing, it’s a temptation most of us would struggle to table.
Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb
