Raise your hand if you care that New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez is on the verge of hitting his 600th career home run? Yeah, me neither. Yes, there are only six other players who are ahead of him on the all-time home run list, but I still think it’s pretty meaningless to care about this “achievement.”
I never really liked A-Rod to begin with. But I did respect him. I respected him because he was a great athlete who was one of the true players we had left. However, when he admitted that he had taken steroids even after repeatedly saying he hadn’t, that’s when all that respect went down the drain. It was a complete disgrace to the game of baseball and I think that if anyone opens their mouth and says how amazing A-Rod’s 600th homer is I will punch them. Honoring this “achievement” is insulting to the greats who got to this mark in their career with pure talent. I’m sorry, but I won’t insult Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth or Willie Mays by saying this is something to get excited about.
The thing that ticks me off about Rodriguez is that I am a firm believer that he was going to be great without the steroids. But now we will never know. Would he be at this point in his career if it hadn’t been for getting a needle stuck in his butt? Maybe, but he made the choice and soiled his legacy by being a participant in the steroid era.
So no, I will not get excited for A-Rod. In fact I think his name shouldn’t even be in the record books for home runs. Neither should Barry Bonds or Sammy Sosa or anyone else who used steroids for that matter. As far as I’m concerned, if you feel that you need to take drugs in order to compete then you don’t have the passion it takes to play with the big boys. All I have left to say is, hurry up Jim Thome and knock 24 more balls out of the park so I can get excited about career home runs again.
