{"id":941,"date":"2013-11-07T20:57:05","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T20:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=941"},"modified":"2013-11-07T21:01:04","modified_gmt":"2013-11-07T21:01:04","slug":"a-rod-doesnt-get-it-but-some-nfl-players-are-getting-it-and-it-isnt-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=941","title":{"rendered":"A-Rod doesn’t get it, but some NFL players are getting it, and it isn’t good"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Terry<\/a><\/p>\n

Terry Mosher<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alex Rodriguez is one strange dude. He can\u2019t admit the truth, except when it\u2019s convenient. His fight to exonerate himself from baseball\u2019s attacks will only destroy the image he so fiercely fights to save. What is weird is he does not understand that.<\/p>\n

I first ran into A-Rod when he was playing for the Seattle Mariners. I was Major League Baseball\u2019s official score at Mariner games and one night I mistakenly called an error on him (I had not seen the complete end of the play or I would not have called it an error) and after the game he stood up his date to come up to the press box to talk to me about it.<\/p>\n

By this time, I had already figured A-Rod out. He was not as he seemed to be. He worked hard to project this image as an All-American Boy who came out of poverty to make good. But he was far from that as I discovered by various stories I read on what he did away from the game.<\/p>\n

He took a seat next to me in the Kingdome press box and tried to convince me that he worked his butt off and didn\u2019t deserve to have this error called on him. I had to tell him more than once that I had rescinded the error call just minutes after I made it.<\/p>\n

Still, he kept talking on and I finally exploded and told him that while he was making millions of dollars (this was before his big contract with Texas, but still was large enough, about $3.2 million believe, to upset me) there were homeless people in the \u201cCardboardCity\u201d right outside of the Kingdome along First Street.<\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t seem to faze him one bit. That\u2019s when I figured out he was a phony and so full of himself that he couldn\u2019t see beyond his own image of himself. I may have been the first one to figure out he was phony. When people talk about team leaders on that Mariner team they bring up A-Rod, but he was no leader. Jay Buhner and Edgar Martinez were the true leaders. And Ken Griffey Jr. also was not a leader.<\/p>\n

\"Alex<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alex Rodriguez<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What I feel sad about is A-Rod has not changed. No matter the amount of money, no matter the amount of fame he has collected, he still is not fully accepted by those around him because others have discovered what I did that he is only concerned how he looks. His pronouncements he is a team player are correct only in the sense he is on a baseball roster. He doesn\u2019t really know what it means to be a true teammate.<\/p>\n

The night he visited me in the Kingdome press box, the Mariners were beaten 15-2 by the Blue Jays. My competitive instincts would have been to shower, dress, and beat it back home, pull the covers over my head and try to forget that embarrassing defeat.<\/p>\n

Not A-Rod.<\/p>\n

He was more concerned about his image.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know to what extent he took PHDs. It sure appears MLB has a lot of information that he was heavily involved in using them. But that\u2019s just my guess. If he was, that figures. That would be A-Rod, trying to build an image of not just a superstar, but a Superman.<\/p>\n

The sad thing is he didn\u2019t need to do so. A-Rod is a gifted athlete who I said right from the beginning when he arrived in Seattle that Griffey would someday break Henry Aaron\u2019s career home run mark and then A-Rod would break Griffey\u2019s record.<\/p>\n

Griffey\u2019s assault on Aaron\u2019s mark was stymied by injuries associated with his time in Cincinnati. A-Rod is still going. Or might be still going. I don\u2019t know how this will all play out, but I\u2019m guessing he would be as welcomed back in a Yankee uniform as my error call that wasn\u2019t an error on his resume.<\/p>\n

A-Rod works extremely hard to project an image that makes him look good, yet he is doing everything to ruin his image, from allegedly taking PHDs, to suing everybody in sight in protest, to acting phony in interviews.<\/p>\n

And he doesn\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n

No matter what a court decides, he already has been found guilty by a public that would love to adore him but can\u2019t get pass how he presents himself. And the more he fights on, the worse his image gets.<\/p>\n

Yet, he doesn\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n

Just as he didn\u2019t get it the night he paid a visit to me.<\/p>\n

I have written more than a few times that the NFL has outgrown its rules. Most of us love the sport of football and the NFL. I can\u2019t wait until Sunday when I can watch and analyze the games play-by-play. But players have gotten too big, too strong, too quick, and too fast for the rules. And more and more people are getting serious injuries in the sport.<\/p>\n

Face it, football is a violent sport that gives those who play it the legal protection to do stuff that others on the street get thrown into jail for, with the key being tossed away. It\u2019s criminal on the streets, but lawful on the 40-yard line.<\/p>\n

I just heard a clip of Tony Dorsett, the former PennState and Dallas Cowboy great running back, talk about him showing symptoms of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) a condition that is linked to depression and dementia.<\/p>\n

It was terribly haunting to listen to him talk about his angry outbursts and say he has a tough time remembering things that many of us take for granted. He was almost sobbing while he talked, choking on his words.<\/p>\n

Besides the terrible consequences of brain injury (CTE) on players, the NFL Players Association says the average life expectancy of a player is 58 years, versus the average life expectancy of a non-football playing male in the United States from 76 to 84.<\/p>\n

Former Seattle Seahawk John Moffitt just announced that at the tender age of 27 he is retiring from the NFL because of the risk involved. He said he loves playing football, but the risk far outweighs the award.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s madness,\u201d Moffitt says, \u201cto risk your body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Football is attractive to us because it touches us to the core of our base instinct as a violent animal.\u00a0 We love the violence. We love seeing Earl Thomas roar from across the field and throw himself at full speed at a wide receiver, wiping out the wideout in a Collison that echoes throughout CenturyLink.<\/p>\n

Thomas is probably the best safety in the NFL, but I have to wonder what he will be like in 20 years. I cringe when I see him hit so brutally. Does he know the risk and reward that Moffitt found so disturbing?<\/p>\n

I guess when you put football and the damage it does to players up against the guy who walks into a mall and shoots innocent people, football is much safer.\u00a0 But football played at the NFL level is not safe, and never will be unless they change the rules to flag or two-hand touch football.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Terry Mosher   Alex Rodriguez is one strange dude. He can\u2019t admit the truth, except when it\u2019s convenient. His fight…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":942,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-column","category-mosher","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":945,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions\/945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}