Jason Giambi retired a statesman. Andy Pettitte, it was announced, will have his number retired this August. Mark McGwire, respected Dodgers hitting coach, will be in Arizona for spring training. Matt Williams, the Nationals manager, will be in Viera leading arguably the majors’ best team. Manny Ramirez has an open invite from the Cubs to come work with their minor leaguers.
This is February 2015 for a group stained by their use of illegal performance enhancers.
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Nelson Cruz and Melky Cabrera are starting new long-term contracts for the Mariners and White Sox, respectively. Bartolo Colon and Jhonny Peralta are continuing theirs for the Mets and Cardinals. Francisco Cervelli (Pirates) and Yasmani Grandal (Dodgers) were traded this offseason to be starting catchers in a new locale. They all were suspended for association with a little thing called Biogenesis.
We can go on. But by now, observant reader, you probably get the link. And it will be the first time Alex Rodriguez was linked to drug users in a positive way.
For all those saying there are no second or third acts — or whatever number A-Rod is up to — I think you are wrong. There is no absolute absolution. A-Rod’s soiled past is first-sentence-of-his-obituary stuff.
But there is still time for a rewrite. Still time for Rodriguez, assuming he has better angels, to heed them.
This is not about forgiving or forgetting. Rodriguez is not going to get anywhere near 100 percent of the population to accept his apologies — whether he writes them in script or blood. And no one is forgetting how he stacked one lie upon another, how he unleashed pit bulls from the legal and spin world to dirty the reputations of others. That is part of his permanent record, an ugly part that stays forever.
But his permanent record is not yet permanent.
The question is whether Rodriguez has the personality and tolerance to play the long game, though he never has. His appetites have always been about immediate gratification, about his willingness to give his ear to whatever lawyer, spinmeister or drug dispenser could sell him today rewards.
Financially this has worked out for him. Actually, for all of them. Let us not kid ourselves: Crime has paid in baseball. A-Rod has made $356.3 million and counting. Manny $206.8 million. Giambi $133.6 million. There is an et cetera here because the dollars have flowed to the cheats.
But, despite some evidence to the contrary, all of these men are human, A-Rod included. No one wants to be the forever villain. What many of these others have been able to do is reveal that a good guy lurks somewhere inside them, that they are redeemable characters with a willingness to make amends and a desire to help the next guy avoid the pitfalls. Does A-Rod have that inside him? I do not know. And even if he does, does he trust himself enough to stop having outside influences try to craft that for full effect? This can’t be staged. This has to be real and, yes, part of a long game.
Maybe they are just good con men, but Giambi, McGwire and Pettitte project contrition, sincerity. If they are con men, then they have conned a whole sport, pretty much. Ramirez was pretty much loathed by Theo Epstein when Epstein was Red Sox general manager. Epstein will tell you his inclination was to never trust Ramirez again — never talk to him again. Yet Ramirez showed such change to Epstein that the Cubs’ VP of baseball ops wants him to keep working with the organization’s youngest and most impressionable players.
No player — perhaps not even A-Rod — ran afoul of drug rules and authority like Manny Being Manny.
And 10 years ago this month, Giambi paralleled A-Rod. He was tied to BALCO, the Biognesis of his time. His public denials of steroid use were revealed as nonsense by his federal testimony. The Yankees were pondering whether they could get out of the expensive years left on a long-term contract they came to regret. And because of an ongoing legal case, he was limited in what he could say publicly about his past — never, for example, using the word “steroids” to say what he used.
But he spent the next decade playing the long game. Being a mentor, a good teammate, a credit to baseball. Rockies officials were so impressed with him as a player, they nearly hired him as manager in 2012. He exits as a player among the most likely to get a managing job soon.
BALCO is part of Giambi’s baseball obituary. But it is no longer the whole story.
A-Rod still has a chance to expand on his story. If there is a real decent person inside him (and that has yet to be fully displayed). If he can unshackle himself from all his “advisers.” If he can stay clean. If he can see this is a long game — lots of boos and hate along the way and no immediate satisfaction.
After all the missteps, can Alex Rodriguez begin the lengthy walk to a better tomorrow?