Not to be overly cynical here, but the breaking news that Alex Rodriguez will miss 10 weeks to have surgery on his hip would put him out until, how, mid-to-late May. That’s, oh, 50 games or so into the regular season. And that’s exactly the punishment for a first-time performance enhancing drug offender.

Remember, Roger Clemens had the same coincidental missed time in 2006 and 2007, years when he kept mysteriously coming back in late May.

And Barry Bonds, for all the speculation last year, did not play an inning. Again, no formal steroid suspension but these three things — Bonds, Clemens and now A-Rod — are enough to at least enough to make one wonder if there’s some off-the-books dealing going on at Mr. Selig’s office.

Players get punished; the game avoids sullying itself further; everyone is happy.

Or, maybe A-Rod has a cyst on his hip that just popped up a couple weeks after his steroid problems, Clemens really didn’t want his $4 million/month to include April and May, and no team wanted the greatest home run hitter in the history of baseball.

Conspiracy theories: fun even if they aren’t necessarily true!

(Thanks to M.C. Creme Fraiche for planting the seed on this one. All the way from Seattle, on vacation, and still thinking of us. What a guy).

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 11:04 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.