TERRY MOSHER
ALEX RODRIGUEZ
Maybe its reverse karma that ESPN called me Thursday to see if I was interested in doing a 15-minute segment on Sports Center. The topic: Alex Rodriguez.
I was being asked because I covered the Seattle Mariners for nearly 30 years, including the time I was the Major League official scorer for Mariner games at home, first at the Kingdome and then at Safeco Field and was there when A-Rod was there from 1994-2000.
ESPN is jumping all over the A-Rod story because he is ready to collect his 3,000th hit, which is like hitting the lottery in baseball, since that hit mark makes him almost a certainly to be voted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
There is a hitch in those plans, however, and you know what it’s without me telling you that it’s related to his PED usage. He’s an admitted user and was suspended last season for it and so his baseball career has a tarnish to it that has his place in Cooperstown not yet reserved. There are HOF voters who will not vote for him because of his drug use.
But A-Rod has played well this year for the Yankees, hitting .278 with 12 home runs and 33 RBI. He now has (through June 19) 666 home runs, which is 4th all-time behind Babe Ruth (714), Henry Aaron (755) and Barry Bonds (762) and also is 4th all-time in career RBI (2003) behind Cap Anson (2075), Ruth (2214) and Aaron (2297).
So if you throw out the PED issue, A-Rod is a clinch to be elected to the Hall of Fame when he’s eligible (five years after he retires from the game).
So there is a lot to talk about when the topic is A-Rod. And normally, a person so asked would jump at the chance to be viewed by millions on TV. But I had immediate reservations about it and decided to think about it overnight. I then called the producer back Friday (June 20) to say I had decided to pass on it, and then recommended several other former Seattle Mariners’ beat writers who might jump at the chance to get some face time on TV. I told the producer if all else failed I would do it, although reluctantly.
Why am I so reluctant?
Well, first of all I understand the importance in baseball of what A-Rod is about to do. However, I have issues with A-Rod over his usage and about his personality. It’s difficult for me to get past them. I’m not without flaws, but I’m also not a 600-home run hitter, or a guy who has slammed 3,000 hits so I’m not going to be put on a pedestal for being great. But A-Rod has some major flaws to go along with his incredible talent.
And make no mistake, A-Rod is extremely gifted athletically. When he first showed up with the Mariners I could not help but be impressed. He came with a lofty reputation and did not disappoint.
Early in his career with the Mariners, I wrote that Ken Griffey Jr. would break Aaron’s career home run record and A-Rod would then go on and beat Griffey’s record. There reason I felt that way is because despite they both being about six-foot-three, A-Rod loomed bigger physically. He has huge hands and long arms and he just seemed to overwhelm a thrown baseball.
Griffey was a very talented and natural athlete who had one of the best and sweetest swings I have seen (Aaron did also). He made hitting long home runs seem very easy, while, as I said, A-Rod just seemed to swallow pitched balls.
My prediction might have come true if Griffey had not had an injury-plagued career in the years after he asked for and was traded to Cincinnati, the team his dad played for and for which he grew up with. As it was he hit 630 career homers.
In his eight seasons with Cincinnati (2000-07), Griffey hit 195 home runs, or an average of about 25 a season. In his 11 seasons with the Mariners (1989-1999) prior to leaving for Cincinnati, Griffey belted 398 home runs, or an average of about 36 a season. If he would have averaged what he did in Seattle with Cincinnati, he would have surpassed Ruth’s total and with the 22 home runs he hit with the Chicago White Sox and then back with the Mariners to finish out his career would probably have passed Aaron. You need to know that in Griffey’s last three seasons with the Mariners before leaving for Cincinnati he hit 160 homers and then in his first season with Cincinnati belted 40 more before he began to break down physically.
Will A-Rod reach Aaron or Bonds in homers?
Doubtful. But with A-Rod you never know.
What bothers me about A-Rod is this: First of all, why would anybody with the natural athletic talent he has do PEDs when it wasn’t really necessary for him to achieve greatness. This are hints that he started taking PEDs as early as his senior year in high school.
Why?
Was A-Rod so insecure that he felt he needed a boost?
Maybe that is it, it’s because he is insecure. He tries so hard to be seen as this All-American boy, and he certainly is not. I, and others, recognized fairly early that he was putting on a fake show with the way he related. He wanted so much to be seen as a good guy that he overdid it. Nobody is as perfect as he tried to show.
The thing that finally convinced me for good that A-Rod was a phony came the night he arrived in the pressbox at the Kingdome to protest a call I had made on him. I was by then the official scorer for Major League baseball and I had given him an error on an overthrow of home that allowed a runner to advance from second to third. When the press box erupted in opposition to my call, and after reviewing the play on TV, I changed my call and erased the error that was given to him.
But for some strange reason, A-Rod after the game came up to the press box to talk to me about it. I was doing my usual post-game paper work when he showed up. He sat down and we talked for several minutes. I kept telling him that I had reversed the call, but he didn’t seem to get it. He kept telling me he worked his butt off to be good defensively.
I finally erupted. I told him, look, right outside the Kingdome under the First Street Viaduct there is a cardboard city where homeless sleep at night, and you are making $3.2 million and are up here complaining about an error that was not an error?
C’mon, get some perspective I tried to tell him. But apparently all he wanted to do was protect his image, which by now had gone into the toilet with me. He was as phony as a three-dollar bill and this little incident confirmed it to me.
So for these reasons I have no respect for A-Rod, and I struggled with having to go on TV and say good things about him, as I expected ESPN would want from me.
Will A-Rod get my Hall of Fame vote?
Probably not. It’s sad that we voters have to try to clear out all the mud that the steroid era plastered all over baseball and make sense of who should be in Cooperstown and who should not. It’s difficult because there are a lot of assumptions (see Roger Clemens) and the mud makes those decisions murky.
I’ve gotten old and as I age I have mellowed about Pete Rose and Shoeless Jackson and Bonds. I have not voted for Bonds because of the assumptions you can make about his alleged PED usage, but I’m close to saying I will vote for him the next go-around.
I feel the same way about Jackson and Rose. Rose has made it difficult on himself for his shameless self-promotion, but when you get right down to it he didn’t use PEDs, he gambled. So what is worse: PED usage or gambling?
And if we can vote Rose in, why not Jackson, who was accused of gambling and helping to throw games.
Then, a case can be made, that A-Rod should go into the Hall, also.
Maybe I should just throw up my hands and say vote them all in so we can all move on with life without having this hanging over our heads.
Anyway, I don’t think you will be seeing me on TV any time soon.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.