It turns out A-Rod is just another human being.
Do you guys think this whole steroids scandal may help A-Rod in the long term? Of course. In the near future, there are many media going after this story. If A-Rod apologies for it, most Yankees fans may not treat A-Rod as the greatest player in the game anymore and think A-Rod is a another baseball player with some shortcomings. Does A-Rod relax more and perform better under pressure?
I don't know. Time will tell.
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Your point is very interesting. I never considered this possibility, but I can see how maybe A-rod feels some pressure removed by being knocked off his pedestal, so to speak.
I am afraid that the opposite occurs. He has (supposedly) been steroid free since 2004 and performed very well (especially 2007) over that span. Certainly, he hasn't dropped off the way, for example, Giambi did. But the Texas years were his best homerun years, so he may feel extra pressure to show that he's just as good without steroids.
I know he's human, and I don't fault him for making a mistake. I'm very disappointed, however. Not for any arbitrary moral reason about right/wrong or good/bad...but because I was so looking forward to him erasing the asterisk from the HR record set by Bonds. A-rod admitted to using steroids for 3 years in Texas. So even if/when he breaks Bonds' record, he will have the asterisk too. It would have been great to have Bonds erased from the top line in the record books so soon after he set the record. Now we need to wait for some other (steroid free) athlete to beat the record. Everyone thought Griffey was going to do it (well before Bonds had a chance to), so even A-rod isn't a sure bet. The A-rod asterisk could join the likes of Bonds, McGuire, Sosa, and others.
So no, I don't feel Arod is a "bad person" because of this, but I'm really wishing he had walked away from the Yankees during his opt-out bluff a few years ago. We are stuck with him for a long time.
Another possiblity is A-Rod may care less about his personal statistics and care more about team for winning baseball games.
Time will tell.
When you go back to the posts I posted when A-Rod opt out, I actually wished Yankees don't bring him back. That being said, we only can hope he can walk out of this mess and delivery a champion with his teammates soon.
If you look at the numbers in context, instead of just the raw counting stats, you can take comfort in the fact that Bonds never came within sight of Ruth when compared to the league average. In fact, by percentage higher than the league average, the best modern "steroid sluggers" (Bonds, McGwire, Corky Sosa) seasons pale in comparison to Ruth and Foxx's best seasons and are close to Greenberg in 1938.
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