I agree with what Bo said about ARod micromanaging his own image and coming off as false, but my point was that if this was his biggest sin prior to the steroid allegations, than the punishment did not fit with the crime. I mean how many commercials do you ever see ARod in? A few here and there, but certainly not as many as you’d expect for a guy with movie star looks and once in a generation talent. His public image has never been very good, and of course as Bo said, that’s mainly his own fault, so I don’t really care that people choose to feel a certain way about him, but the level to which those feelings have affected the way he’s thought of as a baseball player is unfair.

In regards to the Francouer anecdote, we’ve all heard plenty of stories about Jordan being dick, about Lebron being a dick, about Kobe being a dick, even about Tiger being a dick. I mean even guys like Mays and Dimaggio were famous for their lousy dipositons. Let’s face it, most of these guys are going to act like assholes a lot of the time. They’re so used to getting their way and walking all over people that they’re not going to stand for any inconvenience or perceived slight. Most of these guys, however, are revered by the general sports fan, and you probably can’t go 20 minutes watching TV without seeing one of them in a commercial. People don’t hate ARod because he’s a bad guy. His problem instead has been that he’s never really connected with the sports fan. As Bo hinted at, part of this is definitely something inate within him, his perceived fakeness, his seeming just a little too perfect and robotic. Part of this is that he started out in Seattle, geographically the Siberia of American sports, in the shadow of Ken Griffey Jr. Part of it was a series of PR decisions that blew up in his face; starting with bashing Jeter while in Seattle, continuing with his horribly handled free agency in ’01, and culminating with his forcing a trade away from Texas in ’04. The latter obviously compounded everything else as he alienated most baseball fans by becoming the walking talking symbol of Yankee greed; and yet his timing, his already poor image, and his relationship with Jeter made him impossible for most Yankee fans to accept. And of course, there’s been many smaller incidents that have angered people, mainly because they already disliked him in the first place. He’s just never really fit in, and in trying to find a way to do so, he’s only made things worse.

This is all fine. I don’t care if people hate the guy, but my problem is that I think that it interferes with how people perceive him on the field. There’s a certain segment of Yankee fans and baseball fans in general that refuse to give him the credit he deserves. The idea that the arrival of ARod was responsible for the downfall of the Yankees is so dumb that it hurts me, as does the idea that Jeter is a winner and ARod isn’t (or however you want to phrase it). From a baseball perspective, Jeter was in the right place at the right time, and ARod wasn’t. The failure of the organization to adequately replace the late 90′s versions of guys like El Duque, Cone, Wells, Clemens, and Pettite is why the Yankees have not won. Their lineup has never been the problem. So my point about feeling sorry for him was not to say that there was no reason to dislike him or that I didn’t understand it, but instead that he has been held to an impossibly high standard on the field and blamed for things that he should never have been blamed for. His successes are simply what is expected, while his failures are met with sheer disdain from his own fans. And this steroids thing is now the icing on the cake for ARod haters. It’s now always in their back pocket and can be used to minimize everything he has done and will do.