We'll believe A-Rod when he has guts to go at it solo

Alex Rodriguez has always attracted throngs of media,


At George M. Steinbrenner Field, the spring training place where Yankees go for celebrity rehab, they are going to give us the full pinstripes Tuesday when Alex Rodriguez meets the media. Jorge Posada is supposed to be there for A-Rod. Andy Pettitte and Derek Jeter and Mo Rivera will be there, too. But if this is going to be the Yankee photo op to end them all, why stop there? Why not invite Yogi and Whitey, too, and Bernie Williams, and Mr. October?
Since these occasions really are becoming a tradition like Old-Timers’ Day, why not make it look that way, too? Maybe there should be a receiving line.
Pettitte seemed genuinely wounded last season that he did what he did with HGH. Rodriguez seems wounded, too, but mostly that he got caught. Now there is even an apology call placed to Selena Roberts of Sports Illustrated, who broke the story about Rodriguez testing positive for Primobolan and testosterone, even if Rodriguez hasn’t said that himself yet.
Rodriguez called her a “stalker” when he was interviewed on ESPN. What, now she’s not a stalker? Or he’s just sorry he called her a stalker when he was trying to rehab himself? Maybe it’s all part of the “healing” process that Joe Girardi keeps talking about.
But talking about healing is about as relevant here as people talking now about what a hard worker Rodriguez is. As if that is some kind of mitigating circumstance when the subject is the use of hard-core steroids. Jim Morris, the University of Miami baseball coach, was the latest to weigh in on what a hard worker A-Rod has always been. So were a lot of great players who, in the words of the great Henry Aaron, never used anything more than chewing gum.
Understand something: Alex Rodriguez has the same rights on damage control as anybody else. He has a right to sit there in Tampa and say that after Tuesday he’s not talking about his positive drug test for the rest of the season or the rest of his life. And a positive drug test from nearly six years ago isn’t the kind of drunk-driving arrest we got this winter from Joba Chamberlain. He isn’t Mike Vick and he isn’t Chris Brown, isn’t even Plaxico Burress, even though A-Rod shot himself in a different way.
Rodriguez is fighting for his reputation here, and his good name, and his place in baseball history, and those are high stakes indeed. It doesn’t mean Tuesday’s show will be anything more or less than that: a show. Once again the other Yankees, even the well-intentioned ones, are just props.