Alex…it’s time to go!
By Joseph E Rathjen August 1, 2013
It’s time for Alex Rodriguez to hang up his glove and retire from Major League Baseball. Do the right thing, Alex, spare the sport you love so much anymore shame and embarrassment. America’s favorite pastime sport is in serious trouble and needs its reputation cleaned up quickly. Either retire, or at the least, take your suspension like a man and sit out the rest of this season and the next season as well. Sometimes a long vacation can do wonders for the soul and can supply valuable moments of self-reflection.
Major League Baseball also needs to continue to clean up its drug-infested reputation before it’s too late. The fans have had enough, the players are seething and America’s favorite pastime sport is in danger of becoming another Tour de France – with Alex Rodriguez being cast out as its next Lance Armstrong-like poster boy for drug use. Whatever happens today or tomorrow or by the end of the weekend will decide whether this latest drug fiasco gets put behind us, or if Major League Baseball gets pulled into a long, dragged-out court fight with Rodriguez and his attorneys.
Alex Rodriguez can save all of America and Major League Baseball an excruciating headache by accepting the suspension that MLB Commissioner Bud Selig will announce at any moment. He can go home with whatever is left of the $61 million dollars remaining on his contract, and accept his punishment like a man, or he can fight it and force Selig to implement a rare and legally resounding decision to ban Alex Rodriquez from Major League Baseball for life. This of course, would put Selig in the uncompromising position of having violated the collective bargaining agreement with the players union which has appeal and grievance procedures built-in. But as Major League Baseball’s Commissioner Selig has…
“…the right to take action against a player to preserve the integrity of the game.”
And who could blame him? Although it’s been said that Bud Selig’s hands aren’t entirely clean of baseball’s white-washing of past steroid drug use by players for years, still, something must be done. Grievance procedures being what they are, a high-impact bulldozing of the drug infestation overshadowing the league is the only resort Bud Selig has left. It would certainly solve the NY Yankees problem of what to do with Rodriquez. If the NY Yankees organization’s actions of the past few weeks are any indication, they want nothing to do with their third baseman anymore. And who can blame them?
Alex Rodriguez has already been given enough chances and paid way too much money. His obscene, 10 year salary of $280 million hasn’t produced much for the team. Plus, with his failed attempt to come back from his second hip surgery, his career in baseball remains questionable if there is any at all.
Rodriguez doesn’t have too many options left.
If Rodriquez does get banned from the sport, he would forfeit what’s left on his contract. If he accepts the suspension, then he’ll lose about $34 million of his salary for this year and next year also.
But should we care? Should anyone feel sympathy for a ballplayer who was so greedy to get better than what he once was that he would pump himself with performance-enhancing drugs to cheat the game? And then convince other players to do the same?
I think not.
Bye Alex…it’s time to go.
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