Alex Rodriguez does not owe you an apology. And if you think Alex Rodriguez does owe you an apology, no apology he could ever give you would be enough.
That’s the lesson to be learned from Tuesday’s handwritten release, the capstone on the slugger’s weeks-long attempt in the dead of winter to rehabilitate something resembling his public image. Or at least to the point where the team that’s tried desperately to get out of his contract and the media that’s bayed for his blood for over a decade now let him focus on getting ready to do the only thing he’s ever really wanted to do in New York City: play baseball.
This is hardly a unique take – Craig Calcaterra over at HardballTalk expressed a very similar thought in a bit more situationally-appropriate fashion – but it’s an important one to remember over the rest of the week, as the frozen city and its stir-crazy writers in the dailies work themselves up into another frenzy over A-Rod’s latest, and hopefully last, public statement. Who knows? Maybe this time Bill Madden and the rest of his ilk will be satisfied by something Rodriguez says or does. If so, that’d be a first.
The apology tour – and the fact that Rodriguez has been forced to abase himself in this manner – is mainly about power, and the exercise thereof. Yankee executives feel they’re owed an explanation, as if there’s any other explanation necessary than “I wanted to help the baseball team I play for win baseball games.” You want an explanation for why a player uses steroids? Take a look at that ring that says “2009 World Series Champions.” You want to play moralist? A-Rod was a monster in that postseason for New York. Hand back all those rings, vacate that World Series championship, and then go to the New York Daily News and talk about all the apologies that you’re owed.
Yankees ownership wants Alex Rodriguez to know that they won’t forget his “scorched earth” tactics from the summer of 2013, which has all the moral rectitude of the Wolf lecturing Peter on the evils of eating meat. But it’s also about money, too, because when it’s about power in this country, it’s also almost always about money. The Yankees were only successful in getting one year of Rodriguez’s contract voided – and even then still had to pay him about $3.2m for off-days last year, something they first tried to fight then tried to get the rules changed to avoid in the future. Now, they’re taking the stance that the milestones Rodriguez hits over the remainder of his time with the club just don’t count for bonus purposes. Again, fair’s fair – if those runs, those hits, don’t count for his contract, don’t put them on the scoreboard.
And that brings us to the letter to the fans. This letter, which was either encouraged or explicitly ordered by the Yankees brass, serves one purpose: to allow the average Joe whose full investiture in the New York Yankees is a couple hundred of dollars for tickets a year and a whole lot of feelings to pretend he’s Alex Rodriguez’s boss. That’s what this is: vicarious bossing. This is not a letter to the victim of an assault, or to someone who has been substantially deprived of life or property. This is a letter primarily intended to make the people who read it feel superior, as if they’ve taught a subordinate an important life lesson. It is a letter meant to assist in preening.
That’s what you’re doing when you type “Apology not accepted,” into social media and hit the send button. That’s what you’re doing when you opine that the letter is “too combative,” or that you don’t believe a word in it, or that there’s just simply not enough grovelling. You’re preening. You’re pretending Rodriguez actually exists to make you happy not by hitting baseballs a very long distance, but by allowing you to exert moral power over him. And that’s fantasy. That’s not real life. A-Rod is not, should not be, and never will be accountable to fans on the street who are angry he didn’t play a moral game of baseball – something that never has existed; something that never can exist.
Everyone knows this. That’s why this apology was a bad idea, and why it was so stridently demanded by people with no interest in seeing Rodriguez succeed: fans who demand apologies from players do so because they dream themselves bosses, and some will never accept them because they have no power to fire the players instead.
Take former Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte, who will be having his number retired by the Yankees in a ceremony on “Andy Pettitte Day” this August. Pettitte was listed in the Mitchell Report as a user of performance-enhancing drugs and admitted to his use, apologizing to Yankees and Astros fans. He was not suspended, as his transgressions came before the league instituted punishments for PED abuse; by retiring his number, the Yankees are making clear that they have no problems with how Pettitte has comported himself.
By and large, New York fans had no desire to fire Andy Pettitte. Partially that comes from the team not wanting to fire Pettitte – they never signed him to an interminable long-term deal, felt disrespected by him and limited by his contract, and pursued a vengeful buyer’s remorse through the local media. Yankees fans loved Andy Pettitte, because he was an affable, fan-friendly family man, instead of an aloof, standoffish gun-for-hire. He was also a pitcher who was able to spin his use as purely for “rehabbing from injury,” instead of being a power-hitter, the near-ubiquitous stereotype of a selfish PED user only doing drugs to juice his stats.
Pettitte’s apology was one of the very few that will ever be accepted. Rodriguez’s will not be. Nothing Rodriguez can say or do will be enough. Some people have no interest in being pleased. All they want is an admission of guilt, so they can fantasize about how they’d punish it.
Ask Mark McGwire how that worked out for him.
