Piss-poor Sport and HUGE PANSY to Boot

I didn't want to do it. I fought every instinct and impulse I was having to write this post and I failed miserably. I just can't help it. Alex Rodriguez leaves me no choice in the matter.

If you haven't seen the replay of A-Rod elbowing the Red Sox second basemen - Dustin Pedroia - in last night's game, then I strongly advise you to go to Redsox.com and view the clip under the 'sights and sounds' section of the page. It will infuriate you.

What he did to Bronson Arroyo in 2004 was surely the biggest pansy move in all of sports, throughout the history of sport...not just baseball. Last night's antics were right up there if not worse. A second baseman turning to make a jump-throw to first in an attempt to turn a double play puts that man in an extremely vulnerable position. Yes, it's legal to slide under him and even take out his legs with your natural slide. What's not legal is sliding past the base and throwing your elbow at the player to disrupt the throw. It's bullshit, it's sickening and it's something that only a pansy like Alex Rodriguez would do. It makes me physically ill to watch this man play baseball. What really sucks is the fact that he is probably one of the top five greatest players to have ever played this game in terms of talent and production (or will be once all is said and done). But I can't call a man "great" who plays the game like A-Rod does. The two do not mesh and he doesn't deserve the recognition because of the way he plays.

There are dirty/rough players in every sport, like Bill Laimbeer, Jack Tatum and Chris Pronger. Laimbeer was a bastard but he played really hard and legally. Same with Tatum and Pronger who are labeled as dirty because of hits they administered in their careers. But that's different; those were rough and violent plays within rough and violent sports (football and hockey). It's the reason why Albert Haynesworth wasn't prosecuted for stepping on Andre Gurode's face in an NFL game this past season. Those sports will breed violence, always. Baseball is not a violent sport. It's a gentleman's game. It's your father's game, your grandfather's game, and so on. It's the sport all parents want their kids to play because it's "American" and it's clean and they probably won't get hurt. Unless, of course, they're playing against guys like A-Rod who not only play very dirty baseball...but they cheat. And they cheat badly.

Alas, there is solace to be taken in one simple fact: A-Rod will melt in the biggest of situations and ultimately be marked with that stigma for the rest of his pathetically outstanding career. He's caught in his own head when it comes to the clutch and there's no better justice in the game than that...a cheater who is better than almost everyone else who plays talent-wise, but he can't win the big one because he's stuck in his own mind. I find it ironic that in an era of baseball where steroids and synthetics of the like are marring the game and threatening the purity of baseball, I can't get past a guy who's just really competitive; a guy who's so competitive that he can't help but cheat. But steroids are cheating too, right? So why can't A-Rod be suspended for being a pansy?