Sherman: LET’S HOPE A-ROD’S DOING IT CLEAN

Here is what it moved me to say: I hope he is doing this clean. That is near impossible to know since, for example, HGH is not tested for. But if he is doing this clean—and, again, let’s hope so—it would reassert how foolish he was to ever play dirty and raise doubts about all of his accomplishments, including those in the present tense.

After all, he is thriving now despite the hip surgery, disrupted spring and birth certificate realities. If he is clean, it is a reminder that his prodigious talent did not need artificial assistance.

Rodriguez, more than some quadruple-A hanger-on hoping for a major league career, had the advantage of outrageous skills. He fell victim to wanting more and/or the peer pressure of the game, and didn’t need to heed those calls. He had the right formula clean: Talent plus work ethic equals greatness.

To that extent, Girardi suggested that the hip injury has been a blessing in disguise because it temporarily both robbed the game he loved from Rodriguez and also gave him time to re-assess the messy state of his day-to-day existence.

“We really missed him,” Girardi said. “But over the long haul he got a chance to think about things in his life.”

Wash hog here, if handy.