New York Yankees milk Rodriguez for all he's worth
Without much regard for principle, New York are making the most of their fading and expensive star player despite his 211-game doping ban
On opening night, the cheat hit clean-up. Of course, he did, as the centre of a circus that Alex Rodriguez was widely accused of foisting upon the poor (ha!), victimised (ha! ha!) and - more tellingly - offensively undernourished (aha!) Yankees.
The same New York Yankees who immediately ceded to Rodriguez the most glamorous position in their line-up only hours after Major League Baseball set the parameters for his exit from the sport.
The same Yankees who made the snap, dubious judgment that Rodriguez was a better bet to deliver runs after major hip surgery and nine months absent from the major leagues than Alfonso Soriano, who had 18 homers and 55 runs batted in.
Understand this: The Yankees did not have to be so accommodating to Rodriguez on Monday night in Chicago, or the next night, when he moved up to third in the order. They did not have to play him, much less fuel his fantastic notions of quasi-normality days after he essentially accused them of complicity with Major League Baseball in seeking to bar him from the game.
The Yankees did not have to make Monday night a spectacle on steroids, so to speak. But they could not help themselves any more than the MLB, which for years turned a blind collective eye, while players made an institutional farce out of the sport.