A-Fraud Steroid Allegations: The Sports Equivalent Of A $500,000 Cap On Executive Pay

With the Yankees set to dominate baseball this year, we needed something to level the playing field:

The legend of “A-Fraud” grows.

Joe Torre took a lot of heat last week over excerpts from his new book. Among the myriad of skeletons he exorcised from the Yankees closet, he said the idea that Alex Rodriguez may not be the most genuine soul in the world had always been a running joke inside the Yankees locker room.

Well, it looks now like A-Rod’s words and actions are going to have to be good for more than just his teammates. With Saturday’s bombshell CNN/SI report that Rodriguez tested positive for steroids back in 2003, he now finds himself in the unenviable position of having to choose his words carefully because if indeed failed that test what he says next will go a long way toward determining if the rest of baseball — and the sports world for that matter — will be as forgiving with him as they were with players like Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte.

If Rodriguez doesn’t play this thing perfectly, he’ll be the East Coast version of Barry Bonds and the Yankees’ 2009 traveling zoo will be inhabited by far more than its usual cast of 800-pound gorillas.

Whether or not you buy the apologies from Giambi and Pettitte, those guys are generally very likeable, players you rally behind because they appear to be good people and good teammates. New Yorkers are a forgiving bunch. They want to see their heroes fight back from adversity, even if the hole they have put themselves in is because of their own doing.

New Yorkers are the polar opposite of fans in a city like San Francisco, where despite every single piece of evidence suggesting Bonds is as guilty as O.J. Simpson, the people who buy the tickets continue to turn the other cheek and actually support the guy, almost to the point where they have convinced themselves that Bonds is the victim and that this is all one big witch hunt.