But that’s not all it’s reporting.
Supposedly, Gene Orza, the chief operating officer of the players' union, tipped A-Rod off in advance about a 2004 drug test. Given that the steroid of A-Rod’s choice was (is?) Primobolan, which reportedly has a much shorter bloodstream half-life than Deca-Durabolin, an Orza tip-off, if true, surely would have allowed him to beat a test.
Question: Will A-Rod break Bonds’ home run record?
He has seven years left on his Yankees-for-life contract, which runs until he’s 40. He’s 210 homers shy, which is 30 per year. Since a no-steroid Hank Aaron hit 40 dingers in 1973 at the age of 39, and had 44, 38, 47 and 34 in the four years before that, at ages 35-38 (A-Rod turns 34 this summer), it seems possible.
That said, in the non-steroid world, Aaron was the definite exception, not the rule, to typical longevity of power hitters. Most tail off about the age of 36 or 37.
That said, lets look at this. Give A-Rod four seasons of 35 dingers a year – through age 37. That gets him 140 of the 210 he needs. To get 70 more over the next three years after that, to pass Bonds, would require 23 or 24 a year.
And, over at Yahoo, Dan Wetzel has a great column on this, noting that allegedly-clean A-Rod was supposed to deliver MLB’s record book from the taint of Bonds.
Beyond wondering if baseball is past even having a sense of outrage, Wetzel notes that A-Rod as A-Roid has the semi-positive fallout of shattering the “roider-as-Popeye” stereotype.
He also wonders whether A-Rod, with his oft-fragile psyche, is capable of standing up to the stress of “user” mixed with “Bonds record chase,” as compared to Bonds’ iron mental discipline.
That all said, since I’ve not had a poll here in a while, and we’re talking about A-Rod chasing Bonds:
No comments:
Post a Comment