“At this point you want Alex Rodriguez to find a cousin, any cousin, who will inject him with truth serum.”
That was the lead to a column written by Mike Lupica that published in the New York Daily News on Wednesday. It gets my vote for best lead of the day.
A-Rod, the one-time Mariner, didn’t get very good reviews following his press conference on Tuesday where he talked about being injected with “Boli” – another name for the steroid Primobolan — by a cousin two times a month for three years (2001-03).
His excuse? He was “young and stupid.”
He called it “amateur hour,” when it came to using those drugs. He said he didn’t even know if he was taking them the proper way. He admitted to feeling an energy boost, but little else.
As much as I don’t want to, I tend to believe what A-Rod was saying on Tuesday. I find in plausible that he was looking for an edge, wanted to keep it secret and didn’t really investigate what he was taking or consider the implications of what he was doing.
OK, he wasn’t that young (he was just under 26 when he started injecting and just over 28 when he quit), but he was stupid. (Hey, this is the same guy who left his wife for a fling with Maddona). I’ll buy the argument for now. A-Rod, for his wealth of talent on the field, isn’t a very good communicator so I’m taking that into consideration. But if it turns out that A-Rod was lying again and that more evidence surfaces to turn this into even more of a circus, then throw him to the Lions. Literally.
Three more things about A-Rod:
* I can’t wait to read the book by Sport Illustrated’s Selena Roberts, who broke the A-Rod story on Feb. 7. The book, due out in April, will be called: “A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez.”
* During Rodriguez’s press conference, he admitted taking Ripped Fuel while with the Mariners. I found that very interesting, because if A-Rod was taking it, you know a lot of other players in the same clubhouse were doing it. Ripped Fuel contained ephedra, which was later banned by baseball. I remember seeing a bottle of it in a certain players locker during spring training in Peoria – and this was a couple years after A-Rod had left for Texas. It was a sold over the counter as a weight-loss aid and energy booster – the same stuff that contributed to the death of 23-year-old pitcher Steve Belcher of the Baltimore Orioles in 2003.
* Former Mariner Raul Ibanez admitted he was floored when he heard that A-Rod, an ex-teammate and fellow Miami resident, had admitted to taking banned substances.
