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USA Edition | Today Is Thursday, March 11, 2010 |
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USA Edition | Today Is Thursday, March 11, 2010 |
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Being Rich And Unaccountable In America
Back then it was a different culture. It was very loose. I was young. I was stupid. I was naïve. And I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time. I did take a banned substance, and for that I am very sorry and deeply regretful.
I should have gone to college, not become a big league player at the tender age of 18, and it was just me and my cousin messing around with an over-the counter substance.Alex Rodriguez, New York Yankees
On February 17th, 2009, New York Yankees super-star Alex Rodriguez appeared at a spring training press conference to speak about his use of substances banned by Major League Baseball during the 2001-2003 seasons. Before Mr. Rodriguez spoke, New York Yankees PR chief Jason Zillo told reporters, “There will not be any follow-up questions … to keep this as efficient as possible.”
Big money, big salaries and big media have afflicted athletics in ways carefully concealed from public view. No matter sport or league, money is the driving force in athletics today — for even collegiate athletics have become professional in scale and management. Driven by television values, athletic competitions are segmented programs in which game play is masked by chatter and endless commercial interruptions. In recent years protecting the brand has eclipsed the ethos of sportsmanship from which athletic competition arose.
Big money has distorted how owners, players and fans perceive the game. The single measure of performance in professional athletics is cash-flow. When money is the sole measure of success, nothing else matters. As a result, professional sports, both major league and collegiate have become an inside-outside game. On the outside there is a game, one with history, rules and traditions that enliven or even enrich the human experience. Behind that game is a very different reality — one where money drives every decision, where expediency rules, where athletic abilities, real, or enhanced, are marketed absent regard for consequences beyond profitability.
After years of admitted untruths about his use of banned substances, ostensibly to improve his baseball playing abilities, Alex Rodriguez had been cornered. So had Major League Baseball, the New York Yankees, and everyone suckling at the river of cash sustaining the A-Rod brand. Whatever was to be revealed that morning was carefully defined, scripted and monitored by baseball’s best PR specialist and lawyers. Perhaps not since Richard Nixon’s embittered cover-up of Watergate has there been such a well-organized cover-up designed to focus public attention away from the pernicious realities of commercial sports.
That there were to be no follow-up questions telegraphed that the fix was in, damage would be contained. There would be no culpability, no responsibility assigned, no accountability would attach. Not to Mr. Rodriguez, The New York Yankees, or Major League Baseball. What was the happen that morning would be little different from the big tobacco executives who told the congress that nicotine was not addictive. Or the other baseball stars who assured congress they had certainly never used any banned substances. Or the automobile executives who told the congress that they only needed $18 billion to recessutate the companies they had run into the ground.
Still, no reporters or sports writers appear to have left when Mr. Zillo announced no follow-up questions. While some very tough and insightful questions were asked, there were few substantive answers. By the time Mr. Rodriguez nervously fingered his written script, it was clear that what the Yankees’ organization wanted said, or known, was all that would be said. With that, the highest paid player in the history of major league baseball nervously took the microphone.
In his written statement, Alex Rodriguez said little about his motives for intentionally and secretly injecting one or more banned substances while playing for the Texas Rangers. What he told reporters, teammates and baseball fans that morning had the feeling of having been filtered through layers of lawyers and press agents. After having confessed what he had done, Mr. Rodriguez explained it all away by claiming only to having been stupid, or naïve, or young.
When asked if his 2001-03 seasons should be asterisked, or wiped out of the record books. Rodriguez replied, “That’s not for me to decide.” Still, there were some good questions. Joel Sherman, well aware that Rodriguez had just signed a new $252 mln contract, wondered how an athlete who takes great care of his body would risk his health by taking something he knew nothing about and which others said was wrong. “I was young and stupid,” was at the heart of the answer.
New York Post reporter, Mike Vaccaro, asked Rodriguez why he was so secretive and so reluctant to ask about proper procedure during the 2001-03 seasons. According to NYT online, “Rodriguez paused for a while, clearly cornered, and said, ‘That’s a good question. I knew what we were taking weren’t Tic-Tacs. I knew that it was, potentially could be something that perhaps was wrong.’”
New York Yankees' George Steinbrenner Field, Tampa, Florida
In a country that sees itself a world power because it believes in doing the right thing, telling the truth, playing by the rules and kicking ass and taking names of those who don’t, Alex Rodriguez told us his actions and lies were inconsequential. With so much money on the line, Rodriguez handling of the matter makes clear that he believes he is neither responsible for his behavior, nor accountable to anyone. George Steinbrenner may well believe that. So too might the Major League Baseball Players Association, as might Major League Baseball itself.
There’s big money here — for in his first eleven seasons in the major leagues, Mr. Rodriguez earned a comfortable $197,431,586. He made big money, the franchises made big money, his advisors, lawyers, accountants and financial planners all made big money. So did advertisers and broadcasters and the newspapers and magazines whose reporters came to Tampa to hear what Mr. Rodriguez had to say. For everyone involved in Mr. Rodriguez’ multimillion dollar income stream, protecting the cash flow seems the only thing that matters. Citigroup believed that too, as did AIG and Fannie Mae. And so it seems does Mr. Rodriguez. It’s just not true in a free nation that depends on others doing the right thing for its very existence.
A youthful mistake is of little consequence unless you’ve lost your job to the mistakes of crooked bankers or Wall Street criminality. And what if your mistake was only to accept financing on a new home? Millions of ordinary Americans are suffering the consequences for their mistakes. But Mr. Rodriguez believes himself exempt. Certainly you can’t expect a grossly overpaid athlete to a responsible or accountable citizen, can you?
Yet that’s what his prepared statement argues. He’s special — don’t we know that? Certainly you wouldn’t expect someone who has so well received the bounties of freedom to troop off to Afghanistan to protect his country? No, that’s for others to do. His job, he seems to believe, is only to play baseball, hit home-runs, and cheat the game that has made him a multi-multi millionaire.
Mr. Rodriguez and his lawyers want us to know that this is the America of the rich and famous — they bought it fair and square. Did they? I may have missed that memo.
For the rich and privileged, America is the place where responsibility and accountability don’t attach to men like Alex Rodriguez. Rodriguez cannot be expected to behave within the rules or menial laws others must obey.Nor Richard Fuld, Ken Lay, Enron, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Merrill Lynch executives.
A-Rod’s non-explanations and demurral of responsibility were only lightly challenged by the sports writers who attended his Tampa press conference. Perhaps they already know that America has become a bifurcated culture in which the rich and powerful get a free ride while ordinary Americans go unemployed. Mr. Rodriguez cannot be expected to be responsible or accountable. He is far too valuable to the vested interests of others by being at the center of a major league financial empire. His future performance is essential to optimizing baseball’s immense media empire, television revenues, and maximizing New York Yankees’ baseball revenue.
He was all of those things, but there is nothing about stupidity, naïvety or youth that sanctions misbehavior, lawlessness or irresponsibility.
Mr. Rodriguez failed to speak to the once proud history of his game, or the men who who made it America’s pastime — who played baseball without benefit drugs or steroids. What Rodriguez told his teammates and baseball fans that morning had the unmistakable ring of entitlement and privilege.
Every month thousands of momentarily stupid, naïve young Americans do irresponsible things that gets them in trouble, or lands them in prison. These young people, are made to face reality and pay their debt to society for their misdeeds — some no more serious than having contact with banned substances. What’s different about these young people, mostly of color and male, is that they are neither rich nor famous. Being poor, black, Hispanic, or foolish in most American neighborhoods is an open ticket to trouble. For baseball fans, auto workers, and ordinary Americans society demands they be accountable. Why not the bankers who stole people’s pensions? Why not the Detroit executives? Why not Mr. Rodriguez?
Such ideas are evidential of a pervasive and pernicious poison destroying us all.
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