New York Local News

By JEFF CAPELLINI, WCBSTV.com Senior Sports Producer
NEW YORK (CBS) ― 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.

A-Rod is nothing like Giambi and Pettitte. He's arrogant, aloof and standoffish, but also warm, charismatic and fiercely private. He tends to rub everyone the wrong way because off the field nobody can relate with him and he does nothing to endear himself to Joe Everyman. On the field he fails much more often than he succeeds in a big spot, and this drives fans insane because they expect a hell of a lot more from a $300 million ballplayer.

So to say the proverbial perfect storm is coming to the Yankees clubhouse this spring is putting it mildly. What A-Rod says and does from this point forward will say a lot about his character and whether the Yankees will function as a ballclub with great expectations or as just another sorry chapter in a long list of Bronx Zoo distractions, something that more recent teams have struggled mightily to overcome.

And while we're on the subject of steroids and accusations and he said/he said, Jose Canseco may have been once again proven correct. Canseco is a bad guy. We all know it, but his whistleblower act has resulted in massive ramifications for Major League Baseball. So far, nearly every player he's pointed a finger at has been unable to shake the cheater label.

Last year he suggested he had proof A-Rod cheated. Many in the media sort of let this one go, because Rodriguez had never been in trouble before. He may be a jerk from time to time and may not win any fan or player popularity polls, but he appeared to be an honest broker when it came to performance enhancing drugs.

Now, he's on the verge of taking the express elevator to baseball hell. Unless the CNN/SI report is false, which is doubtful because those guys really do their homework, Bonds' asterisked home run record may eventually be broken by yet another guy who operated outside the rules.

As for what this does to the Yankees, it's hard to say, really. On one hand they are already the most hated team in sports outside of New York. Sure, there are millions of Yankees fans all over God's creation, but when the team goes to Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities that have rabid fans and unforgiving stadium atmospheres, not to mention smaller market cities like Kansas City that look at a Yankees series as their own World Series, the Bombers are going to be shelled from the second they get off the bus. Rodriguez will be vilified every second of every game in which he dons the pinstripes.

The Yankees are built to win it all in 2009 and odds are they will simply be too good to let all the distractions impact their final record and quest for a playoff spot. But how Rodriguez – a player the Yankees desperately need to produce if they indeed plan on making it all the way to meaningful October baseball – reacts to all this and how he performs on the field is the big wildcard.

If A-Rod did something wrong, he must come forward now. Not tomorrow, not during spring training. Now. If he pulls a Bonds or Mark McGwire and says nothing or a Rafael Palmeiro and vehemently denies everything he will be destroyed if indeed the CNN/SI report is confirmed. You may then see a .300 hitter who puts up 40-50 homers and 100-130 RBIs totally disappear. Or you may see him continue to put up his numbers, while the intensity of Yankee hatred around the country reaches its boiling point.

That said, this much is true: it's harder to hate and boo a guy if he shows some humility. Giambi and Pettitte heard some catcalls and steroid chants in opposing cities in the first few series after they came clean. By midseason, however, the steroid chants disappeared and everything was back to normal.

This will be harder for A-Rod, much harder. If he did it, he has to come clean now. He'll take some lumps in spring training and will deal with a serious backlash during a good portion of the first half of the regular season, but if he mixes a sincere apology with continued high production, he'll get off much easier.

And make no mistake, if he says nothing and then goes out and struggles he won't have to go to Boston or watch SportsCenter every night to hear the venom.

He'll be destroyed nightly in the new Yankee Stadium.

That's the price you pay for cheating … and being a jerk.

(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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