On the same morning his Daily news colleagues report Alex Rodriguez associate Angel “Nao” Presinal will be denied acces to locker rooms and clubhouses during the World Baseball Classic, John Harper remains focused on the embattled Yankee third baseman, promising “you have to believe there will be more embarrassing, perhaps even incriminating, details uncovered in the days and weeks to come as A-Rod is paying not only for using steroids but for insulting people with details of his usage that were impossible to believe.”
Outsized ego or not, I think A-Rod is mostly a misguided soul who grew up forever looking for the attention and direction he never received from a father who abandoned the family when Alex, the youngest son, was 4 years old.Still, I can’t feel sorry for A-Rod because he brought all this on himself, and made it worse this week by failing to come clean on the hows and whys of his usage.
Now he may be testing the limits of support from teammates and everyone in the Yankees’ organization.
Friday, in fact, one prominent Yankee person was saying there is a sense the nightmare is just beginning.
“As soon as I heard him talking about the cousin at his press conference I knew this is where we were headed,” the person said quietly. “He needed to get it all out in the open and tell the truth, and it’s pretty obvious he didn’t.”
If Presinal was a constant traveling companion during the 2007 season, as reported in the Daily News Friday, it practically forces to you to think the worst about A-Rod, especially given his believability issues this week.
Was he using human growth hormone, for which MLB has no test? Would he have gone to the extreme of using steroids again and somehow managed to avoid detection from drug-testing?
It’s worth remembering that A-Rod was at the lowest point of his career after the 2006 season, booed unmercifully at Yankee Stadium and then publicly humiliated when Joe Torre batted him eighth in the playoffs against the Tigers.
It’s also worth remembering that he was noticeably leaner in spring training of 2007, shedding bulk that seemed to bind his swing in 2006, and that Primobolan, the steroid he apparently used in 2003, promotes lean muscle.
In any case, the result was an MVP season, perhaps the best overall season of his career. And even though it raised no eyebrows at the time, in retrospect you have to wonder if he would turn to pharmaceuticals to regain an edge both mentally and physically.