If you had Alex Rodriguez in your office pool, as I did, as getting a 50-game suspension, you lost. And of course A-Rod lost, too, in not being able to play for the entire 2014 season. But gee, the Yankees should now have some money to sign Tanaka. What a weird coincidence!
I think it is in everybody’s interest (except A-Rod, of course) to make him the face of PED use. Bud Selig has A-Rod’s scalp, the Yankees have freed up some money, and even the players’ union benefits in a way, because Alex is taking all the flak for being a juicer, instead of there being widespread outrage about multiple players using PEDs.
Anyhow, that was one of the problems I had with last night’s “60 Minutes” report — no other names were mentioned as far as last year’s Biogenesis suspensions. You also would never know that Melky Cabrera and Bartolo Colon and Ryan Braun previously tested positive thanks to Biogenesis’ products, something which flies in the face of Tony Bosch’s assertion that doing these PEDs are nearly a “cakewalk,” as he bragged last night.
Anyhow, here are the questions I would have like to have heard answered last night:
* Bosch asserts that A-Rod came to him in the summer of 2010 and asked him to do for him what Bosch did for Manny Ramirez in 2008 and 2009. Does that include failing a PED test, as Ramirez did in 2009? Either A-Rod really is dumb, or Bosch was telling a lie.
* Bosch claimed a Rodriguez “associate” threatened his life, something Rob Manfred of MLB also claimed. Was a police report filed? Did they ever go to the cops over this? What evidence do they have, other than some text message to Bosch’s girlfriend? And if this allegation is credible, why wasn’t it brought up months ago, and why was it only in the second half of the report?
As my friend Jesse Spector writes in the Sporting News:
If A-Rod was behind what Manfred called a “known associate” threatening Bosch’s life, that’s more than impeding a baseball investigation, that’s worthy of a criminal investigation. But “60 Minutes” presented no evidence of that threat other than Bosch’s and Manfred’s words late in the report. If there was real evidence to tie it together, the “60 Minutes” story is leading with “Disgraced baseball player threatens to kill drug dealer,” not the salacious and remarkably unverifiable claim by Bosch of going into a stall with A-Rod in a public bathroom in Miami and shooting him up.
* According to Bosch, A-Rod passed 12 drug tests in that time frame. But MLB only has players take two PED tests a year — once in spring training, and once in the regular season. Why did A-Rod have to take 12 in 2 1/2 years?
* “60 Minutes” went into great detail to show a multiple home run game against Florida that Bosch claims to have helped A-Rod with. But 2010 through 2012 were also the worst years of A-Rod’s career up until that point. Why not show, for example, how little Bosch’s stuff helped Alex in the playoffs?
* What about the other players named? Why didn’t MLB send dozens of their minions after Ryan Braun or any of the other people named?
* Why does Bosch need $800,000 a year in security? How do those costs compare to celebrities’ security? How is this money being funneled?
* Why didn’t the report ever explain why A-Rod should get a higher penalty than other players did?
Anyhow, what unanswered questions do you have about the report? Tell us about it!
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