They Can't Handle The Truth

Watching Alex Rodriguez's press conference yesterday I was pretty impressed with how well orchestrated the whole thing was.

While there were reportedly over 200 journalists in attendance at the Yankees practice facility in Tampa Bay, A-Rod and his recently hired crisis management team (I'm not making that up) did a very intelligent thing for him and laid out a few ground rules in order to keep the situation from getting out of hand and keep the message he was feeding us consistent.

Firstly, no follow up questions allowed.

How can you expect to get a full answer out of someone who is clearly reluctant to give the whooole truth away, without asking any follow ups.

A-Rod kept his responses short and consistent. The two messages we heard over and over from him were, "I was young and immature" and "That's not for me to decide".

The other ground-rule of the 30 minute or so interview was that they would try to allow reporters who cover the Yankees on a regular basis to ask their questions before others. While this may have been done as a simple courtesy to those who spend the most time with the organization, I think it was actually done to put a small censor on some of the questions.
Who do you think is more likely to ask a pressing and damaging question to someones face, someone who deals with these people everyday, or someone who flies in to Tampa for a single interview and is never seen or heard from again.

There were pressing questions asked, but most fell short of getting to the true heart of the matter and it was not made any easier on the gathered press as a result of the 'no follow-up' rule.

A-Rod was, at one point, asked if he believed he cheated during the three years he claimed to have been a user of 'boli', something he referred to as an energy booster and "we knew we weren't taking tic-tacs". This was Rodriguez's opportunity to fully and completely fall on his sword. He had admitted wrong-doing, he said his cousin injected him on average twice a month for six months during three seasons, he apologized to letting his fans, teammates and organizations down. But he did not, or could not admit to cheating.

"That's not for me to decide" was what seemed to be his stock answer of the day in failing to take full responsibility for his actions. It had an aura of McGwire's "I'm not here to talk about the past" performance in front of congress a few years ago.

While A-Rod did seem contrite in his press conference, it is but a little irking, if not down right puzzling, why all of a sudden he could remember copious amounts of details pertaining to his steroid use when just a week ago during his initial interview with ESPN he could not remember what the steroid was, where he got it and what it did for him.

Some part of me still wants to put this issue aside, forget about it and go back to playing baseball. But another, equally sized part, is still very quizzical about what other details may or not still be out there.

I'm waiting for someone to admit the whole truth. I'm waiting for someone to come out and say, "You know what, I did it and I'm not sorry for doing it. I did it because everyone else was doing it and it was the only way I could keep up. And you know what, my teammates knew about it, my agent knew about it, my coaches and doctors knew about it and they all did nothing either. You know why, because nobody cared back then. It was just the way it worked."

We know that's what A-Rod was thinking, we know that's probably what he wanted to tell us, that everyone was doing it and he's no different from the other 103 people on that list who tested positive. I fear, however, that will never happen. No active player will ever have the guts to come out and put their career on the line for the pursuit of truth and justice.

A-Rod, as the recent SI cover so eloquently put it, is the latest and greatest to fall. But that doesn't mean we can't still have some sympathy for the position he's in. He is, after all, but one of an unknown number of players during that era to have used. He just happened to get caught.

It also doesn't mean that this story is anywhere near being over. He had the opportunity to put it to rest for good yesterday and though A-Rod should get much credit for being considerably more open than anyone and everyone who has come before him, ultimately, if full and complete truth is the test, A-Rod failed.