When Alex Rodriguez arrives at Camden Yards on Friday with the New York Yankees, maybe he can explain to us what would possess fellow superstar Manny Ramirez to ingest a substance questionable enough to cost him 50 games and nearly a third of his $25 million salary.
A-Rod should know, because he recently admitted to years of steroid abuse while he was making $25 million per season with the Texas Rangers. Ramirez isn't admitting to more than bad judgment for taking a nonsteroidal substance he claims was prescribed by a doctor in Miami to treat a legitimate medical problem. But it's fair to wonder how the two highest-paid players in the history of professional baseball find themselves at the same chemical crossroads at approximately the same time.
It's also fair to ask, if you've been in the Baltimore area for any length of time, how the winding road that is baseball's performance-enhancement scandal always seems to find its way back to our doorstep.
This is, remember, the place where the first high-profile major league player was suspended for violating the evolving Major League Baseball steroid policy. Rafael Palmeiro claimed in 2005 he unwittingly took a supplement containing the banned steroid stanozolol, perhaps from a contaminated vial of injectable vitamin B-12 he received from teammate Miguel Tejada. Then came the sting operation that led to the Arizona home of former Orioles relief pitcher Jason Grimsley and cast the steroid spotlight on several of his Orioles teammates.
Charm City wasn't the center of the steroid universe back then, because the two high-profile federal investigations were being conducted from the San Francisco area and upstate New York, but Baltimore was very much in the ballgame.
Fortunately, A-Rod is just passing through, so Orioles fans can voice any residual steroid-related resentment at him from the stands. The last time the Yankees were here, Mark Teixeira was the target of the fans' wrath, though for entirely different reasons. In fact, there were people in the Yankees' traveling party who said they felt that Teixeira was booed so heavily during opening series of the regular season in part because Rodriguez was not there to take his share of the anti-Yankees abuse.
