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February 19, 2009
Not Impressed With Alex Rodriguez
Alex Rodriguez held his much anticipated press conference on Tuesday and as I said in an opinion piece I wrote for NYYFans.com, I thought it was pretty disappointing because instead of taking steps towards putting everything behind him, A-Rod only fanned the flames. In fact, I thought the press conference was pretty much a disaster and that was pretty surprising considering that A-Rod had hired a team of advisers, including some who specialized in public relations and damage control to weather this storm. Many of A-Rod's answers to reporters questions were evasive and contradictory, and admitting to "misunderstanding the facts," aka, fabricating a story about Selena Roberts breaking into his house made me wonder just exactly what else A-Rod might be "misunderstanding" or making up all together. I found it very hard to believe much of what he said.
ESPN.com is reporting that they've found out who A-Rod's mystery cousin is and it's 46-year old Yuri Sucart which makes A-Rod trying to excuse it all away by blaming youthful naivety to be even more ridiculous than when he said it on Tuesday given that Sucart was in his late 30's when he was injecting A-Rod, hardly a kid. In addition, on Tuesday A-Rod claimed that his cousin convinced him to try "boli" but Sucart is portrayed by ESPN as a "mule" who only did what he was told by A-Rod which begs the question as to whether it was actually A-Rod who asked Sucart to get some sort of performance enhancers for him. It will be very interesting if Sucart speaks publically what he says and whether his story holds up any better than A-Rod's.
Members of the media have brought up numerous questions that still need to be answered even after A-Rod's press conference and they aren't the only ones looking for answers. MLB's investigators would also like to speak with A-Rod as to whether his cousin had access to the Texas Rangers clubhouse and whether he or A-Rod provided any other players with performance enhancers. While A-Rod can't be punished for his use of performance enhancers in the past, he could be penalized for giving performance enhancers to others so I hope that never happened. Some are already saying that A-Rod should refuse to speak with MLB and I couldn't disagree with that more. For his own good A-Rod needs to cooperate because any failure to do so will make him look like he has something to hide. In addition, while MLB turned a blind eye to the performance enhancers problem in the past, if there is any hope of them making up for past mistakes and addressing it now, they need to get as much information as possible about the use of performance enhancers in the past and present.
Experts in the field of anti-doping also have a few questions such as just exactly what is "boli?" According to ESPN.com those in the field including the leading expert, Dr. Don Catlin, have never heard of it. There are additional questions about how taking "boli" produced a positive test for both Primobolan and testosterone since according to Catlin it's unlikely that one injected substance would cause a positive test for both, though he acknowledged that it could have been tainted. That opens the door to even more questions such as whether "boli" is even what A-Rod used or whether that was a "misunderstanding of the facts" like the Selena Roberts story.
Something tells me that what's been revealed so far about A-Rod and his use of performance enhancers thus far only scratches the surface.
Posted by silverdsl at February 19, 2009 08:07 AM