A-Rod & The Tea Party

I thought I should start by disclosing that Alex Rodriguez is my least favorite professional athlete of all time.  It has been that way since A-Rod first became a free agent after the 2000 season.  My New York Mets had just lost the World Series in 5 games; they were returning everyone, but they still had a gaping hole at shortstop.  With A-Rod looking for a new home, it seemed like he was destined to be the final piece of the puzzle for this excellent Mets team.  The defending NL champs got the first shot - well ahead of eventual winners Tom Hicks & the Texas Rangers - but the demands made by Rodriguez and his agent Scott Boras were apparently so outrageous that then-GM Steve Phillips immediately ended the negotiations.

Even though I had just had my Bar Mitzvah, the pompous selfishness was all too apparent to me; it sealed the deal that I would forever be rooting against this ridiculously selfish player.  13 years and dozens of well-documented acts of self-centeredness later, A-Rod finds himself fighting for his career (much to my glee). 

This is not a happy time for A-Rod

Not only is A-Rod involved in the Biogenesis scandal that caused more than 15 major and minor league players to be already suspended, but he also is being accused of being closer to the operation than any player and tampering with the MLB investigation.  When MLB investigators presented their findings to Rodriguez, he was so shaken up that he did not show up to the ballpark for work that night. He was right to be worried, as MLB levied a 211-game suspension against him (the final 49 of this season and all of next).  No other player involved in this scandal was suspended for more than 66 games, making Rodriguez's suspension more than 3 times as long as that of anyone else.

Of course A-Rod is the only player involved in this scandal appealing his suspension. It is exactly the type of egotistical thing he would do.  As a part of this appeal - which he has described as fighting for his life - A-Rod sued MLB and Commissioner Bud Selig today in New York State Supreme Court. He also filed separate lawsuits against Yankees team doctor Chris Ahmad and Columbia Presbyterian Hostpital/Columbia University Medical Center.  How deplorable

The lawsuit accuses Bud Selig & MLB of conducting a witch hunt that had only one ending: destroying the career of Alex Rodriguez.  On it's surface, the forum for this suit, many of the allegations, and the money and time it will take to resolve that case, this would seem to be very serious. However, as excellently explained by ESPN Legal Analyst Lester Munson, it mostly a way of causing extra aggravation for MLB by tangling them up in more legal wranglings with a bonus pr effect of allowing A-Rod's allegations to get lots of press without him having to back them up for probably years.

While I'm not surprised, I'm obviously disgusted.  A-Rod clearly has been using PED's again so he should just let it go and take his lumps.  Instead he is using procedural impediments and scare tactics to try and get even the smallest part of what he wants.  He won't go away even though everyone - including his own team - is fed up with him, and is causing everyone he does business with to spend money so he can throw his tantrum.  Alex Rodriguez is the Tea Party of the MLB.

Why don't you keep crying, crybaby?