Alex Rodriguez Finds Himself in Another Fine Mess
By Mike Cardillo
He’s also going to be remembered as one of the out-and-out weirdest.
Even when he’s not playing, the man manages to remain — forever — the “Lightning Rod” in the media. Late Friday afternoon the New York Times reported Major League Baseball investigators found evidence Rodriguez had hired somebody to obtain medical records from Florida’s Biogenesis anti-aging clinic — the epicenter of pro sports’ latest PED scandal.
Who but Rodriguez, whether it’s through arrogance (or ignorance) would have the chutzpah to pay somebody to try to obtain and presumably destroy medical records before MLB could obtain them? It sounds like rejected subplot for that new Michael Bay movie with Mark Wahlberg and The Rock set in Miami.
Yet with A-Rod, anything is seemingly possible.
If you read any headline about Rodriguez would it shock you?
From the bizarre photo shoot where he kissed the mirror, to being caught on camera being fed popcorn by Cameron Diaz at the Super Bowl, to getting linked to an underground poker club, to the immortal “Cousin Yuri” defense in his previous link to PEDs, Rodriguez seems to exist in this weird head space where his actions only make sense to one person: A-Rod.
Money does funny things to warp your mind when you get that rich, but still.
Those other incidents, like the ill-timed sunbathing session in Central Park, had a tragi-comic feel to them. You simply had to laugh that a man — who’ll likely clear over a half-billion dollars in salary by the time he retires — would be so out of touch with reality. Then again, this was the same guy who thought karate-chopping Bronson Arroyo’s glove on a routine groundout up the first base line was a perfectly reasonable idea.
This latest A-Rod incident doesn’t have the built-in laughs of his other suspect decisions. Instead it seems like the moves of a desperate man — a man owed $119 million, still, by the Yankees from 2013-2017.
Maybe, in the end, the only people who’ll get a laugh from this is the Yankees’ brass as it offers them a lifeline, if however slim, to get out from under the Rodriguez contract should this progress to the point where there’s legal recourse to void the pact.