As if any more data points were necessary, Alex Rodriguez demonstrated this week that he belongs to a growing club of people -- Lance Armstrong, Bill Clinton, Ryan Braun, Ted Bundy among others -- for whom lying is a strategy and for whom the truth is an option only when all others have been exhausted.
ARod released a written statement this week vaguely apologizing for "mistakes" without ever identifying his transgressions amid the hope that the baseball public would simply forget about it and let him play ball. This is a ploy clearly devised by new handlers who recognize that there is plenty of precedent for avoiding the issue until the public just gives up and talks about something else.
This strategy worked magnificently for Braun, but for reasons unavailable to ARod. Braun still has ability that endears him to the Milwaukee faithful. Although Braun is the same conniving scumbag that Rodriguez is, his entire lying scheme can be seen as one incident, so that even fans residing outside Wisconsin might be willing to give him a second chance. And Braun never committed the tripartite sins of a) not being Derek Jeter, b) signing an insanely lucrative contract or c) going to New York.
Rodriguez has to admire Braun from afar for ingeniously squirming out of responsibility for his package of bald-faced lying, phony self-righteousness, evasion of consequences -- he accepted a suspension during which he was injured anyway; his one and only punishment being the lost income during that period -- and reinstatement in the hometown fans' hearts. Braun and his PR team have to earn ARod's particular reverence for the manner in which they cynically portrayed his refusal to discuss his transgressions as an abject apology.
Sadly, as with much else in his life, Alex Rodriguez is way too tone deaf to pull off a Braun. For all his world class talent, his immense drive and hard work, his intelligence and his spectacular good looks, ARod is a supremely sad and pathetic creature worthy of our sympathy alongside our scorn. It is transparent from a great distance that he suffers from raging self-doubt and very possibly depression. He is extremely uncomfortable in his own snake skin and so wants to be liked without understanding that he first has to like himself.
And so Rodriguez's evasiveness will simply come off as evasiveness. Yankee fans will mock him. The team will beseech the god of loopholes for a way out of his contract. The media will rip what is left of him until they get tired of it, or until he gets hurt again. In the end, it won't matter anyway, because ARod will start to embarrass himself on the field. Don't be surprised if he retires in shame before his contract runs out (in three years.)
Ultimately, shame and accountability will be the reasons to detest Braun and not Rodriguez. ARod, unable to tune out other people's wrath, suffers in his shame and is held accountable for his misdeeds by everyone connected to the sport. Braun, pathologically, knows no shame and has manipulated his situation so that he will get away with it.
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