By
Posted February 11, 2009

I just don’t know who to believe anymore.

If you haven’t already heard, on Monday, New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez admitted to taking performance- enhancing drugs during his 2003 MVP season with the Texas Rangers, in an interview shown on ESPN.

Back in 2003, Rodriguez was one of 104 major league baseball players that tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. The list of players was kept completely confidential until just days ago when Rodriguez’s involvement was revealed by Sports Illustrated reporter Selena Roberts.

Rodriguez was the man everyone loved to hate, and it didn’t help that he played for the Yankees, but sadly enough yet another face of Major League Baseball has went down in flames.

In the interview Monday with ESPN’s Peter Gammons, Rodriguez said “When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me, and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day.” he said. “Back then, it was a different culture. It was very loose. I was young. I was stupid. I was naive. And I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time. And I did take a banned substance. For that I'm very sorry and deeply regretful.”

After watching all of the ESPN interview Monday, I was left asking myself, who is next? Who else is out there that has yet to come clean about their past, and better yet, what other 103 names are on this list that will hopefully be released within the near future?

Rodriguez apology did feel very sincere and very honest, spilling out more details than I thought he would.

The more I thought about A-Rod’s situation, I came up with a few thoughts that have yet to be answered in my head.

One side of me can side with A-Rod. He was young, had just signed one of the biggest contracts in baseball history, and he collapsed under pressure by taking something that he did not know was a steroid at the time.

The childhood side of me is still trying to enjoy the game of baseball and realize it’s not as dirty as it now seems.

However, I also need to face the fact that athletes will do WHATEVER it takes to get the edge on their opponents. It started way back when with the Chicago ‘Black Sox’ scandal, and moves all the way down to spit balls, corked bats, pine tar and now performance-enhancing substances. How much longer can baseball be an honest game? Or is it too late and we as fans refuse to see it?

And those thoughts leave me wondering if players really know what they are taking is illegal or not.

When asked what exactly it was that he took, A-Rod said “There's many things that you can take that are banned substances. I mean, there's things that have been removed from GNC today that would trigger a positive test. I'm not sure exactly what substance I used. But whatever it is, I feel terribly about it.”

To be honest, I kind of believe him.

Exactly how educated are these players that are taking these substances, and how informed are they of what is illegal and what is not? For all of us outside of Major League Baseball, the list of banned substances could change every week, we may never know.

Rodriguez also says that he has probably been tested 8-10 times since 2004 for steroids and has not tested positive. That becomes a little harder to believe, especially with A-Rod’s career on the upswing in the past few seasons. But, for baseball’s sake, I hope he is right.

So many questions, not enough answers and I’m sure there is only more to come in the downfall of America’s pasttime. The saddest thought of all is wondering, does the game have to be like this forever? Are the days of the natural athlete behind us? Hopefully, as time goes on, more names are revealed and more truth comes out.

As for me, I know in my heart that baseball still holds a special place. This news will not hold me back from frequenting Comerica Park, along with numerous other ballparks as my friends and I prepare for our baseball road trip this summer. In the end, it’s still about the love of the game. Whether it is at the professional level or in your back yard, this game has a very bright future. I just hope that somehow, someway, the professional game can start to clean up its act and give kids someone they can look up to, once again.