Some Country for Old Men

Alex Rodriguez (aka A-Rod) may very well still be the best player in Major League Baseball. We won’t know for sure until he recovers from his cyst (barf), and returns to the diamond.

What we do know is that right this second, A-Rod is either getting into more trouble, or planning how he’ll get into his next very public pickle. It’s been the Fall Winter Spring of discontent for baseball’s highest-paid player, who is back in the hot seat, this time because: apparently his steroid use began in high school and continued when he was in pinstripes (contrary to what he said when he “came clean”); and, perhaps more damning, it turns out there’s a reason Ms. April always seemed to hit home runs when games were out of reach.

This is all according to Sports Illustrated’s Selena Roberts, whose book on A-Rod is due out next week:

The book, as first reported by the New York Daily News, claims Rodriguez, while playing shortstop for the Texas Rangers, tipped opposing batters about what pitches were coming in lopsided games. Rodriguez, according to the book, tipped those players so they could reciprocate and provide him with what pitches were coming in one-sided games so that he could pad his batting statistics.

Yep, turns out A-Rod would stand out there at shorstop and tell opposing hitters what pitches were coming. Is it any wonder those Rangers’ pitching staffs were so bad?

Rodriguez needs to stop. Just stop. All the news he makes is bad. First he was caught in a Toronto tryst with a stripper. Then he spent a few months running around with Madonna, while his wife — who’d just given birth — was at home alone. Then, of course, the steroids use came out. There was a denial, a mystery cousin, crying, lies, and then there were clarifications. Just as the saga seemed to be dying down, A-Rod decided it’d be a good idea to have his picture taken while kissing his own reflection. That has to be the end, right? Well, no, because after that storm calmed, the madame who provided call girls to Eliot Spitzer admitted that she also had a fling with A-Rod.

Not liked on his own team, by his own wife, incapable of coming clean, and just unable to stop, A-Rod should be back in a Yankee uniform by mid-May. If all goes well for him (and how could it not!?), A-Rod will be back on easy street — a place where his teammates, according to Roberts, called him “bitch tits”. Watch the video (40 seconds in) and you’ll see why (warning: image cannot be unseen).