The topic this week has been legacy. Which brings us to Alex Rodriguez.
The polarizing slugger hit career home run No. 600 Wednesday afternoon against the Toronto Blue Jays, an awkward achievement that combines pure talent and performance-enhancement. The Yankees showered their superstar with adulation by playing the theme song from “The Natural.” Perhaps “Transformers” would have been more appropriate.
Rodriguez joining the suddenly not-so-exclusive 600 club thrusts the issue of steroids and PEDs back into the spotlight. Seven men now reside in this club and three of them, Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds, have either been linked — or have admitted — to using performance-enhancing drugs.
A-Rod, however, has one thing going for him that his tarnished peers do not, and that’s time. He’s still playing. And unlike Bonds — who finished his career with the BALCO scandal hanging over him like an evil specter — or Sosa — who has been avoiding the topic altogether — Rodriguez admitted using PEDs. It took his name being listed in a 2003 testing survey for it to happen, but at least A-Rod — unlike Sosa — didn’t run away from irrefutable evidence.
So where does this leave us? It’s safe to believe — given baseball’s harsher testing policy and A-Rod’s declining power numbers — that he no longer is using performance-enhancing drugs. Reaching 800 career home runs isn’t happening; catching Bonds at 762, while probable, isn’t guaranteed. The biggest boost to Rodriguez’s legacy — aside from the playing time he has left to make amends for cheating — ironically could be the very thing he took PEDs to avoid — the clean, natural decline of his game.
