F**k you for cheating. F**k you for stealing paychecks. F**k you for influencing the outcomes of games. F**k you for lying. F**k you for dragging us all down. F**k you—Ryan Braun and Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and Roger Clemens and Miguel Tejada and Nelson Cruz and Barry Bonds and Jhonny Peralta and Paul Lo Duca and every other guy who felt the need to inject nonsense into their bodies to help accomplish what, naturally, they could not.
F**k you.
But no, people aren’t irrationally upset about what a baseball player has done. And me saying that, perhaps, people have blown A-Rod’s transgressions out of proportion is totally radical and crazy and I just do it for page views. Yep.
Say what you want about Pearlman -- I know a lot of people don’t care for his stuff -- but he is a respected journalist within the industry who regularly publishes well-read books and has spent time at some prestigious publications such as Sports Illustrated. Maybe he’s out there quite a bit, but make no mistake: there are a lot of people who feel this about A-Rod even if they don’t put it in print.
And thus when I say that maybe, just maybe, people in the media are unfairly painting the guy as History’s Greatest Monster, I am not being hysterical.