Say it Ain't So

New York Yankee fans now have another reason to hate Alex Rodriguez. Sports Illustrated reported that A-Rod tested positive for two different anabolic steroids in 2003. Back in '03, Alex won the MVP award in his last year with the Rangers as he led the league in homers. In 2003, Major League Baseball tested players for steroids to determine if a policy was needed to battle steroids for the 2004 season. Ultimately, 104 players tested positive for a banned substance and apparently, Alex Rodriguez was one of the names in the report. Sports Illustrated got their information from multiple sources close to the sealed document.

Reportedly, Rodriguez tested positive for testosterone and Primobolan. Primobolan is even more expensive than steroids and also provides less side-effects than your average steroid. This drug is supposed to improve strength and helps to keep more lean muscle than bulkiness. What I don't understand is how this information took six years to get out. After everything we've already been through with the steroids nightmare, you would think we saw the worst of it. But now, baseball's most prized possession, Alex Rodriguez, is a known steroid user. A-Rod is now going to be known as a cheater along with Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire. It almost hurts me to even write about this story because it is so shocking. We knew that it wasn't just one group of players using steroids, but the entire league. But, not A-ROD! Nobody wanted it to be A-Rod, or at least, I didn't. The question now is, what happens next? If it was a positive test in 2003, the league can't do anything because there weren't any policies against steroids then. They need to clean up the league and they seem like they are trying, but every time the MLB gets closer to improving the game's integrity, a story like this one breaks out.

I always thought that it was ridiculous to continue looking for past steroid users. It was in the past and there's nothing we can do about it now. The best the league can do is repair the game in it's present state and continue into the future. There's no way of repairing the past, but that's what it seems like the MLB is trying to do. I don't understand why we need to keep lingering in the past with these steroids. Let's move on and make the game better than ever right now! Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this continuous cycle of exposing players who did steroids helps to prevent them presently. Maybe players will really stop using performance-enhancing drugs when they realize they can't escape the misery the drugs bring to them.

You almost have to feel bad for A-Rod with everything he's gone through in the last few years. But then again, how bad can you feel for someone who is making almost thirty million dollars a year? He is a person, you know. He has feelings... All we can know for sure is that Yankee fans have a new nickname for Alex...I think you can figure that one out. Get ready for a long year of "A-Roid" chants.