Maybe A-Rod's steroid saga isn't all that bad for baseball

Alex Rodriguez was the center of attention during his first workout of spring training on Wednesday. AP

In the matter, fellow citizens, of American disillusionment v. Alex Rodriquez, may I make a small suggestion? Do not allow yourself to be surprised that any hero who competed during the prime steroid years used performance-enhancing drugs. Really, acceptance of this fact will be so beneficial to your emotional health whenever the next big name surfaces ... guilty.

In the specific case of A-Rod, for goodness sake, all the signs were there ... along with the manifold rumors. He is strictly a Type-Me personality, just the sort to try anything to abet his own cause. We know all too well that he is insecure and susceptible to temptation.

Moreover, he was mentioned by Jose Canseco in his mea culpa that also cited a number of his colleagues as likely drug offenders. Canseco was called out as a Judas, but he turns out to be like one of those hideous old crones in fairy tales who forecast all the bad news -- and get it all right. Ancient Mayan literature predicts the end of the world in 2012. Were Jose Canseco to do the same, I would be packing my bag today for the hereafter.

But love is blind. The Yankees twice paid exorbitantly for Rodriquez' services -- the second time, you will recall, after he publicly disassociated himself from the team in the rudest possible fashion. But the cuckolded Yankees remained enthralled by the fact that A-Rod might someday take the all-time home run record away from the unlovely, steroid-scented Barry Bonds -- who, by the way, goes on trial for perjury in just two weeks. The Yankees were buying, they convinced themselves, a knight in shining armor, who would free the sainted record from sin and restore it to a man of grace -- as mobs would descend upon ball parks to pay to watch A-Rod succeed.

But the past is prologue here. What we saw with Bonds was that everyone rooted against him, except for the hometown Giant fans, who clasped him to their bosom. Now, we will only see this phenomenon taken to a new power, for the Yankees have infinitely more admirers and, likewise, infinitely more despisers than the Giants (or anyone else).

Wherever the Yankees go, it will be rather like professional wrestling, multitudes turning out to boo the villainous A-Rod, except in the new Yankee Stadium, where indiscriminating New Yorkers will feel obliged to stand up for their man. It's the same old home-town business as with Bonds: he may be a creep, but he's our creep.

So, in a very real way, what has happened to Rodriguez isn't all that bad for baseball. Really. Nobody much liked him when he was supposed to be clean. He might as well be the new Bonds, an even more divisive figure in pinstripes. Not only will throngs pay to root for him to hit or not to hit home runs, but all students of the game will spend the next decade or so doubling as baseball theologists, interminably debating whether or not A-Rod should ascend into the Hall of Fame.

And, of course, the irony is that anybody with any sense of justice will know that none of this matters because Henry Aaron remains the one true holder of the home run record.