The Baseball Thread

Why was Braun first?

A-Rod must step to plate, take the hit

A month after his general manager publicly advised him to "shut the f--- up," the time has come for
Alex Rodriguez to speak up.

Ryan Braun, one of the two big fish in Major League Baseball's investigation of Biogenesis (the suspected
drug den disguised as an "anti-aging clinic"), has been hooked, reeled in and filleted.

A-Rod, the other big fish, is next, floundering before the bait while baseball's investigators prepare
to set the hook.

This is not the time to hide behind spokespeople or lawyers, to issue "no comments" or simply to run
and hide. The big fish cannot afford to clam up.

Alex Rodriguez needs to do what Andy Pettitte did six years ago: Man up. Open up. And tell the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but.

It seems as if baseball wasn't bluffing when it leaked, through various lieutenants in and out of the media,
that its case against Braun and Rodriguez was virtually airtight, and that even without a positive drug test,
it would bury the two, along with something like 20 others, in a blizzard of incriminating paper and hours of
unshakeable testimony.

There must be a whole lot of truth in it, or else there's no way Ryan Braun, cocksure to the
point of arrogance when he overturned his 2011 steroid suspension on a legal technicality,
would so meekly accept a 65-game suspension, without appeal, and issue a mealy-mouthed
"apology" of sorts in which, Nixon-like, he accepted the responsibility, but not the blame.

"As I have acknowledged in the past, I am not perfect," Braun said in a statement. "I realize now that
I have made some mistakes. I am willing to accept the consequences of those actions."

Braun went on to mention "the toll it has taken on his family," and "the distraction" it has been to his teammates,
without acknowledging that he was the cause of that toll and those distractions. But nowhere does he acknowledge
his PED usage; nowhere in the statement does the word "steroids" appear. That kind of thing might play in Milwaukee
(although I doubt it), but it will never play in New York.

Alex Rodriguez needs to finally and completely bare his soul on what he did and why he did it. No glib lines about
popping tic-tacs, no evasive double talk, no blaming his "mistakes" on a doctor or a personal trainer or an adviser
or a cousin.