Alex Rodriguez's real "sin"

By now, just about every sports fan in the country has seen or read about Alex Rodriguez's use of steroids a few years back. We'll leave the arguments as to what should happen to him now to more learned minds.

But it seems to me what Rodriguez did was damage a lot of very innocent athletes ... and it says here he owes them a big apology.

We are a big brush country. We tend to take one person's problem in a specific area and apply to everybody involved in that activity.

Because he is one of the best players in his chosen spot, what's good for Alex Rodriguez is considered by many to be good for a lot of people.

Except in this case, it isn't so. Worse, he made it appear as if this was a minor peccadillo that could have happened to damn every player in baseball. The result of that is the next time somebody jumps up dramatically and starts putting up numbers he had never done before, the blanket of suspicion will immediately arise. Since the commissioner is not indicating there will be any form of punishment, it can appear to the outsider that Rodriguez is skating clean.

Instead of throwing himself on the mercy of the court of public opinion, Rodriguez tried to talk his way out of trouble. He didn't do a good job in that regard. As a result, the folks who don't regularly watch these things may start thinking everybody is like that.

Well, not all athletes are weasels. And the fact is that most folks who do something stupid (It wasn't illegal) eventually pay for it themselves. Rodriguez not only hasn't paid any penalty of this faux pas but it helped get a contract worth a bazillion dollars.

That makes one of the lucky ones, I guess.

This is also the guy who said publicly a reporter was "stalking" him for the story. A few days later, he called the reporter to apologize. Too late. The damage was done. Again, the star got away with doing something that may not have been illegal but certainly was wrong.

And that is the bigger problem. The good folks in athletics outnumber the bad eggs by a wide margin. But the bad eggs are the ones who get attention.

It says here this bad egg needs to get cracked in some way, shape or form. It isn't likely to happen, though. But it could if enough pressure is put on the $17 million man (BB commish Bud Selig) to do so. It wouldn't be just for the good of the game. It would be for the good of athletics in general.