Alex Rodriguez could have taken the approach of baseball legends Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire, but he didn't. He took an approach similar to less notable star Jason Giambi. A-Rod honed up to the report and took the blame that he deserved. He did not claim to not know what it was, he did not play the victim. He took the high road and took responsibility for his actions.
Rodriguez is quite possibly the best player to ever play the game. He is also, quite possibly the best player to take steroids. My question is how many great players must we expose until we figure it out? Many of the great players in the steroid era took steroids. I'm afraid there are only more stars waiting to be exposed.
What do we do about it? Surely we cannot keep players like A-Rod and Barry Bonds out of the Hall of Fame. They would have Hall of Fame numbers if you took out there steroid years. For A-Rod he said that he was on steroids from 2001-2003, during which he hit 156 homeruns. If you completely eliminate these numbers A-Rod is at 397 career homeruns and would likely still finsih with over 500. If you take A-Rods lowest home run total after 2003 and substitute it for his steroid seasons he has 512 career home runs.
Surely, he is still one of the greatest ball players ever to play the game. He made a mistake. He took responsibility for it, so how much should he be punished? Bonds is in the same boat except he has been what some may call a coward, but he would still have hall of fame numbers.
The steroid era is just a phase that baseball went through. Just as the dead ball era was. There are pitching records from the 1900s and 1910s that were in an era of baseball when the spitball was legal. Now it is illegal. In 2001-2003 steroids were not banned in professional baseball, so if these pitching records do not have an asterik. Why would the hitting records set during this era?
Luckily Major League Baseball now has strict guidelines against steroid usage. Now that it is straightened out we should give a pardon to those players in the steroid era. Besides there were pitchers using steroids that were facing hitters not on steroids. Sorting out this mess is more work than it is worth we will look at the record books one day and know that this era was different than when Ruth had his record and when Aaron broke that. Just like we look at the record book and know that the 1900s pitching records by Cy Young, or what have you, were accomplished in a different era.
Keywords: Alex Rodriguez, Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Era, Hank Aaron, New York Yankees, Roger Clemens, Steroids
