Steroids, Alex Rodriguez | featured news

How did the most extraordinary young player of his generation, a handsome young man who three times (three times!) was named one of People Magazine’s Most Beautiful People, a phenom who was the best shortstop in the game more or less the day he showed up — how did that guy become this A-Rod?

Major League Baseball, which has been investigating the link of performance-enhancing drugs to players with South Florida ties for much of the last year, may be faced with its most significant doping case since the BALCO scandal rocked the sport one decade ago. All-Stars Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, pitcher Gio Gonzalez of the Washington Nationals, Nelson Cruz of the Texas Rangers and Melky Cabrera of the Toronto Blue Jays, along with other MLB players and athletes in other sports, were strongly connected to performance-enhancing drug use in an investigative report by the Miami New Times.

Alex Rodriguez hit his 600th career home run on Wednesday, becoming the seventh player in Major League Baseball to achieve the feat and triggering new debate about his place among the game's greats after his admission that he has used performance-enhancing drugs.

A merciless portrait of Alex Rodriguez as a needy, phony, preening, petulant, self-absorbed narcissist, from the reporter who broke the news of his 2003 steroid use.

In a lengthy press conference at Yankees spring training complex in Tampa, Fla., Alex Rodriguez gave additional details and information about his use of performance-enhancing drugs, which he maintains took place only between 2001 and 2003.

Jason Giambi is happy to see more baseball players going public with their involvement in performance-enhancing drugs and hopes the fascination with baseball's steroid era soon will fade.

His admission came two days after Sports Illustrated reported he tested positive for steroids in 2003, one of 104 players who tested positive during baseball's survey testing, which wasn't subject to discipline.

Jose Canseco wrote that Alex Rodriguez didn't come right out and say, "I want to buy steroids," but instead asked if someone wanted to purchase them, where would they go.

N.Y. Yankees star tested positive for steroids while playing for Texas Rangers in 2003, the year he won the first of three MVP awards.