Alex Rodriguez Has Mad Mockery of MLB Steroid Suspension Policy

It has been a week now since MLB came down with its ruling to ban 13 players for their involvement in the Biogenesis scandal, and in that same time, Alex Rodriguez has made not only his case, but the entire investigation, and suspension a total joke.

As we all know, A-Rod received the harshest penalty of all of those players when he received a 211 game ban that was supposed to begin on Thursday August 8 and carry through the entire 2014 season, meaning the Yankees would have been off the hook for the $25 million they owed him for this season, and the $25 million for next season.

Instead A-Rod appealed and played in the Yankees heartless and gutless series in Chicago this week, while the other 12 players accepted their bans and moved on. To add insult to injury, A-Rod then filed his formal appeal of the 211 game ban, which will now be heard by an arbitrator, Fredrick Horowitz.

He is not expected to make a ruling until November or December, meaning that Rodriguez will play with the Yankees throughout the course of 2013, and get paid.

In short, the suspension is a total farce. A-Rod feels he's been made a scapegoat by MLB, and if the union gets its way A-Rod will get a reduced sentence, and probably will take the field even in 2014.

This is why MLB should have thrown the book at him, and wanted to. With A-Rod out of the way, this appeals process could have been avoided, and A-Rod would have disappeared. Not the case, not with A-Rod, who is too smart to tuck tail and run.

He knows he has $98 million reasons to fight MLB to the ends of the earth with regards to this penalty. He has never been caught for a failed drug test, nor has he ever served a suspension for steroids. That is why the 211 game ban is indeed unprecedented.

Plus, Bud Selig had his chance to levee a similar if not more sever penalty to Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Mark McGuire, to name a few, and never did anything. Now he wants A-Rod out, when all Rodriguez is is a face in a crowd of cheats.

As a result, the process is now a joke. Any big time star can continue to defy the commissioner and the league and cheat the game, and still get away with it. Why not? Because if that star player can lawyer up quickly enough and has the media relations clout to paint himself a victim, he can get away with it.

I will be shocked now if A-Rod even serves anything close to that 211 game ban.

At the very least, he might settle for a lesser ban where he can still get paid by the Yankees in 2014.

The Yankees have to be pounding their heads against a wall right now, knowing that A-Rod is going to remain their problem for a while, and there is no telling what the arbitrator will rule. He might say MLB is in the right, and that A-Rod has to serve the penalty that would essentially take him until 2015 when he is 41. Or, he might say that the penalty is too step and A-Rod can play.

As for the Yankees' fans reaction to A-Rod's first at bat in Yankees Stadium on Friday night in a 4-3 win over the Tigers, it was a mixed bag. Most of the crowd booed, several cheered, a number of pure idiots held signs like "We love you A-Rod", "You are a Yankee Forever."

Any Yankees fan who can legitimately say they want A-Rod on this team, a team that is going nowhere at 58-56 is lying to you, or is not really a Yankees fan. No fan should ever show support for this louse, this liar, this cheat, who has dumbed down this game and betrayed America's former pastime.

A-Rod on the field is the worst thing that could ever happen to baseball. It makes the game look even worse, and stains it more than the steroids themselves.

He should be gone.

MLB should have dropped the hammer, and not allowed him the opportunity to appeal. As for A-Rod, asking him to have even an ounce of humility and accept his fate, is like asking a trouble-making kid not to draw on the walls with permanent markers and crayons.

A-Rod's return to the game is the death of baseball.