A-Rod: All-American tragic hero

This week Mariner legend Ken Griffey Jr. returns to Seattle after 10 years, hailed as a conquering hero and a one-man local stimulus package.

But my thoughts are with another former Mariner superstar, Alex Rodriguez. Has any American had a tougher 18 months than A-Rod?

Oh, sure, millions of people have been the victims of natural disasters or have lost their jobs, their livelihoods, their life savings or their homes in the economic crisis. But I'm talking about important people.

Ever since that dark day back in Dec. 13, 2007, when he signed a 10-year, $275 million contract with the New York Yankees, it has been one tragedy after another for poor A-Rod. Why do so many bad things happen to such a great baseball player?

 It was even a rough road just to get to that $275 million payday. After the 2007 season, A-Rod exercised his "opt-out" clause and decided not to renew his contract with the Yankees.

The existing contract he was concluding was the 10-year, $252 million contract he signed with Texas Rangers after he left the Mariners in 2000. (The Mariners had insulted him with only a $140 million offer.) The Rangers traded him to the Yankees after just three seasons and three last-place finishes.

Scott Boras, his agent, made this momentous announcement during the eighth inning of Game 4 of the 2007 World Series, right as the Boston Red Sox were about to beat the Colorado Rockies and win the Series.

Apparently, for a player to make news about himself during the World Series was some sort of baseball no-no, and A-Rod was roundly criticized. There are hundreds of unwritten rules in professional baseball. Who can keep track of them all?

But then A-Rod ignored his agent, contacted the Yankees ownership directly and negotiated his new contract.

Unfortunately, A-Rod's Yankee teammates didn't play as well as they could have, and in 2008, the Yankees missed the playoffs for the first time since 1993.

Soon after the 2008 season ended, A-Rod faced the toughest challenge of his professional career: He had to confess to using performance-enhancing drugs during the three years he was a Texas Ranger.

His positive test - which was supposed to remain anonymous because it was conducted before Major League Baseball's mandatory drug-testing program began in 2004 - was leaked to a Sports Illustrated reporter.

A-Rod had to admit the positive test in a television interview and subsequent press conference. According to A-Rod, he and his anonymous cousin purchased the over-the-counter steroid from a pharmacy in the Dominican Republic, and the cousin injected him periodically between 2001 and 2003.

It was later revealed that the steroid he hinted that he used wasn't available at pharmacies in the Dominican Republic between 2001 and 2003, but details like that obviously aren't relevant to the story.

A-Rod said he decided to try the banned substance in 2001 because he felt the enormous pressure of his $252 million contract, the largest contract in baseball history up to that point, and he wanted to live up to being one of the greatest baseball players of all time.

But his confession created a huge uproar because A-Rod was expected to be the great steroid-free hope, the player who would someday break Barry Bonds' all-time home-run record and Mark McGuire's single-season home-run record - two players strongly suspected of using steroids when they created the records.

A-Rod also had flatly denied ever using steroids in a 2007 "60 Minutes" interview with Katie Couric, but that doesn't really count because Couric doesn't seem like a real reporter, does she?

A-Rod also has had a number of difficulties off the field, particularly involving women. In summer 2008 rumors started that he was having an affair with pop superstar Madonna, who was also married at the time. She later denied any affair.

In July 2008, A-Rod's wife filed for divorce three months after the birth of their second daughter.

Last month it was also rumored that A-Rod had been a frequent client of the same escort agency that cost New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer his job. Unlike Spitzer, the $4,000-per-hour call girls weren't enough for A-Rod; he supposedly set his sites on wooing the agency's madam.

Say what you will about A-Rod, you certainly can't criticize him for always trying to be the top dog.

After all this turmoil perhaps the greatest tragedy is that now A-Rod has suffered the first major injury of his career, which began in 1994 with the Mariners when he was only 18. He has had to start the 2009 baseball season on the disabled list, so he can't silence his critics with his bat and his glove.

Thankfully, he should be back by the end of the month. To give his fans something to see while he is sidelined, he recently posed for a magazine cover story. One of the pictures shows A-Rod kissing himself in a full-length mirror. You see, deep down A-Rod knows you can't truly love someone else if you don't truly love yourself.

Still, the critics won't let up on poor A-Rod. They speculate on what his tragic flaw could be. They say it could be his greed, his vanity, his arrogance, his selfishness, his competitive drive to win at all costs, his obsession with celebrity and personal appearance or his thin skin when the fans boo.

Or maybe it could be his unfortunate nickname.

Of course, A-Rod still has time to overcome these tragedies and become the beloved man he yearns to be. In professional sports, winning solves all problems. All A-Rod has to do is win a World Series and all will be forgiven.

And there's nothing more all-American than that.[[In-content Ad]]