So A-Rod’s in trouble again with baseball commissioner Bud Selig. MLB’s Barney Fife wants Rodriguez to sit down and explain just what’s going on with those high-stakes poker games we told you to avoid just a few years ago. Better have the right answers, too, or else.
Seems baseball got wind of the fact that A-Rod may have ignored Sdelig’s admonition a few years back to put the cards away, and recently was involved in games that included other rich people, expensive cigars, cocaine, lots of gorgeous women and gamblers who asked A-Rod to let a few ground balls go through his legs at opportune.
Actually, that’s not true. Baseball (Selig) is just assuming that there were sexy women and gamblers there. Makes the story better, and turns a harmless habit into an activity that is rocking baseball to its core. [As for the cocaine, shouldn’t be hard to test him.]
Selig and MLB have a curious relationship with gambling. If teams and the league can make money from it, then it’s no problem. Players? Not so much. So Lenny Dykstra can lose money in poker games several decades ago, be forced to eat number two during an apology and promise to never do it again. Yet the Yankees and other teams can enter into working relationships with casinos and bulk up their bottom lines. The wife of Detroit Tigers owner Mike Ilitch owns parts of several casinos nationwide, yet Selig seems OK with that. The Yankees themselves rake in a good penny on Mohegan Sun advertising. The list is endless.
Selig, who will go down in history as The Steroid Commissioner for turning a blind eye while half the league was juiced, dragging his feet when the issue hit the fan and making excuse after excuse for those caught up in the scandal (including, yes, A-Rod), lives in fear of A-Rod becoming The New Pete Rose.
In Selig’s defense, Bowie Kuhn was even worse. Perhaps stung by his dealings with Rose, Kuhn banished former superstars Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle from the game because they took promotional jobs with casinos trying to make a few bucks. Peter Ueberroth had a short stint as commissioner after Kuhn, and during his tenure rightfully lifted the suspensions.
If Selig has proof that Rodriguez is consorting with gamblers who wager on baseball and could use info passed on by A-Rod, that’s one thing. If A-Rod was just playing poker, leave the man alone to preen in the mirror 8 to 10 hours a day.
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