Is It 2017 Yet?

End of A-Rod's Contract Can't Come Soon Enough

I  am sick and tired of the New York Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez. And the little respect I once had for him has disappeared faster than you can say “liar.”

The man hasn’t played in a game all season long. And yet here we are on June 5, and he is still managing to make himself the center of attention.

In case you haven’t heard, ESPN’s Outside the Lines reported on June 4 that Major League Baseball is seeking to suspend roughly 20 players connected to Tony Bosch and the Miami-area clinic, Biogenesis of America, now that Bosch has agreed to open his mouth about this massive performance-enhancing drug scandal.

And wouldn’t you know it? The man sitting at the top of the suspension list with a bulls-eye the size of New York on his back is none other than…

Yep, you guessed it: Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez.

AKA “A-Rod”, AKA “A-Fraud”, AKA “A-Roid”, AKA “the most-overpaid player in the history of sports.”

If this was just one man’s career at stake, I could swallow it. But it’s more than that. It is the entire institution of baseball that could be affected, and that makes me gag.

If all these accusations prove to be true and these suspensions are handed down, it will cast a dark shadow over the game of baseball. As if the steroid cloud hanging over this league wasn’t dark enough already.

Fool us once A-Rod, shame on you. Fool us twice, and you should be banned from baseball.

Okay, that’s definitely not how the saying goes, but you get the point.

And if you think I’m overreacting, consider this: the severity of A-Rod’s actions threatens the integrity of our national pastime.

"You know what I worry about? I worry about baseball being affected, as a game, the whole thing, what [baseball’s] been through in the last 15 years," Yankees’ manager Joe Girardi said.

And why, exactly, is Girardi so worried?

Because this is all occurring during what has been assumed to be “the clean era” of baseball.

Here we are ten years after MLB implemented its testing policy of performance enhancing drugs, and baseball fans are slowly coming to the sobering realization that this game will never be entirely “clean.”

There will always be bad apples, like Alex Rodriguez, that, for whatever selfish reasons, believe that they are above moral standards, and that they won’t be caught.

Well, guess what? It seems MLB caught you A-Rod. And personally, I’m glad it happened, because now we, as Yankee fans, can finally have some closure to this dark chapter in Yankee history.

No, there is no language in A-Rod’s contract that could void the $275 million mistake that the Yankees signed him to in 2007. And no, sadly, it's not quite 2017 yet.

But Yankee fans should rejoice in knowing that there is a strong likelihood that they won’t have to see A-Rod in pinstripes for the remainder of 2013.

In fact, Alex Rodriguez, when you return from the disabled list do us all a favor and don’t come back. 

We don’t want you. We don’t like you. The Yankees are better off without you.