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.

Is That St. Louis’ Team?

Believe it or not, there are at least two Arizona Cardinals fans in the New York area:

It’s an island of red in a Big Blue ocean, an Arizona oasis amid fans Gang Green with envy.

Sidebar, in Union Square, is the Super Bowl Sunday hot spot for long-suffering local Arizona Cardinals fans — a place where Larry Fitzgerald jerseys are welcomed and Terrible Towels are used to clean dishes.

Manager Zach Israel — a Phoenix native who wears Kurt Warner’s No. 13 — hangs his Cardinals flag inside the bar at 118 E. 15th St. More than 100 Arizona backers create an unlikely red sea of support in the city’s biggest (and perhaps only?) Cardinals outpost.

“It’s insane,” says the manager’s 23-year-old sister, Sasha, a Sidebar bartender. “Everybody’s just so happy.”

And why not? The Cardinals are making their first Super Bowl trip. The team’s last championship came before either Israel was born — back in 1947, when the Cardinals were still in Chicago.

Finding an Arizona outpost in the city was a chore — “Scarsdale is just more popular than Scottsdale,” says James Fletcher, editor of AOL’s Digital City site.

It’s Like The Mean Joe Greene Coca-Cola Ad Just Without The Kid . . . And The Coke . . .

. . . and the good cheer . . . and no one really gives a shit about the jersey because, well, the Giants totally blew it against a team that tied the Bengals this year — a Cincinnati team that lost eleven games — and that Super Bowl win last year was obviously a fluke:

An hour after Philadelphia eliminated the Giants from the N.F.L. playoffs, beating them in a divisional-round game, 23-11, Brandon Jacobs walked toward the Giants Stadium exit.

Over his shoulder was his blue jersey. But as he passed through a narrow doorway, a gust of wind blew the shirt to the floor. Jacobs did not notice, so a man handed it to him. With his head bowed, Jacobs left with the shirt in his hand.

It was that kind of day Sunday for the Giants, who were looking to successfully defend their Super Bowl championship. They shouldered big hopes but let things slip away against the Eagles, who intercepted Eli Manning twice and came from behind three times.

The (Stub)Hub Of City Government Scalps Luxury Box

Don’t worry, Kevin, the additions to the Mets’ pitching staff might mean they have a chance against Philadelphia this year:

The city will relinquish use of the 12-seat box in exchange for whatever revenue the Yankees generate by selling the seats, minus the cost of marketing them. Although neither the city nor the Yankees have publicly disclosed the market value of the suite, similar suites at the new stadium are being sold for as much as $600,000 a year.

The city’s acquisition of the Yankees suite had drawn scrutiny, especially after e-mail messages surfaced in November showing that aides to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had zealously pursued the luxury box, as well as free food and access to post-season games.

. . .

The e-mail messages revealed that after the Yankees made concessions over the size of the suite and the food, the team received an additional 250 parking spaces, as well as the rights to three new billboards along the Major Deegan Expressway and whatever revenue they generate.

The messages contrasted with earlier public statements from Seth W. Pinsky, president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, that the suite was not a big issue and that the city had received it simply as a matter of course. One message said that the acquisition of a suite in the Mets stadium was “a big issue to the mayor.”

Under the new arrangement with the city, the Yankees will be allowed to keep the parking spaces and use of the billboards, and the city will be guaranteed at least $100,000 for each baseball season, even if no one buys the suite. The deal was formalized last month in a letter from Mr. Pinsky to the Yankees president, Randy Levine, that was made public on Tuesday. A similar arrangement is being negotiated with the Mets, which also gave the city free use of a suite in its new ballpark, Citi Field.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

CC Slider, See What You Have Done

Makes you want to root for Cole Hamels:

Despite the recession, our New York teams keep doing what they’ve always done: spending the competition into oblivion. Especially the Yankees. Sabathia had made it clear he didn’t want to come to New York, even after the Bombers had offered him $140 million. So the Yankees gave him 20 million more reasons to change his mind.

How is this even possible? Where’s this money coming from? Never mind that $161 million is, at the very least, unseemly right now. If you want an answer, look back to the days before the Sabathia announcement, when details leaked about the Yankees and Mets asking the city for a combined $450 million more in public bonds, to pay for cost overruns on their immoderate new stadiums. (They’d initially been granted $1.5 billion.) Already, the two teams are not paying rent or property taxes on the new stadiums, and the MTA ($104 for a monthly MetroCard, anyone?) is giving the Yankees their own Metro-North station. The teams are also subtracting construction costs from their share of MLB’s revenue-sharing program, which pays out to less-flush franchises. The Yankees (and Mets) have prepared for a potential recession the old-fashioned way: by reducing their own expenses long before everyone else was doing it. That made paying Sabathia (and Rodriguez) easy. The recession is going to cause normal teams to scale back. The Yankees and Mets are not normal teams. They have big shiny new stadiums and fancy cable channels. So they don’t get normal players.