Sunday, August 4, 2013

Alex Rodriguez may have played his final game of professional baseball, walking four times in a rehab assignment for the Double-A Trenton Thunder Saturday night.

A-Rod has stuck by his thoughts that he'll be with the New York Yankees in Chicago Monday, and manager Joe Girardi even says that he’s got him penciled into the lineup. But if Major League Baseball announces Monday that A-Rod will not be able to play while appealing a suspension, A-Rod’s dream won't be reality, and we may never see A-Rod play baseball again.

As a young fan myself, I don't and still won’t know how to deal with this once the news is made public by the commissioner on Monday.

Growing up, I always looked up to Alex Rodriguez. I didn't know what steroids were and even after he admitted that he used, it would still take me a couple years to comprehend that message, and what it actually meant.

I always look at Barry Bonds as a cheater and still to this day, I consider Hank Aaron to be the all-time homerun champion. Yet, because A-Rod was a Yankee, I didn't consider him a cheater because he was on my team, and I was on his side.

But as I've grown, baseball history has become a much bigger part of my knowledge and I've started to understand what A-Rod did and how it was a terrible thing.

Over the past few months, everything that has come unearthed on A-Rod, along with everything that he’s said and done, has only continued to disgrace himself, the Yankees, and most importantly, the game of baseball – the sport I've grown to love.

Getting him back in the lineup was all I could ask for earlier in the year after it was announced that he would have to undergo hip surgery. But not long after that, the truth of Biogenesis came to light.

As more and more details came up during these past few months, it’s started to shine the light on who Alex Rodriguez truly is: a liar, a cheater, a fraud and an embarrassment to baseball.

I no longer know if I want him back. In many ways, I'd give anything I own just for him to be kicked out of the game for life. For other reasons, I really wouldn't mind to see him back in uniform for the Yankees Monday night.

Of course, his enormous contract is what has caused a lot of this mess, and it’s also one of the reasons I don't want him coming back. Until I'm told I can't, I'll always root for the Yankees. I want them to be as successful as they can – saving the money on A-Rod’s contract will help that cause.

Yet, A-Rod, regardless of age and what type of injury he’s coming off, can easily help the Yankees on the field. As we all know, third base production has been terrible, and A-Rod hit three homeruns in rehab games this year – his three long balls are more than the Yankees third baseman hit in that span.

Maybe if I wasn't a Yankees fan, this would be a lot easier to process, because I would have to deal with this if I was a fan of another team.

While the suspensions will be handed out tomorrow, I probably won't know for years how I'll feel about this. A-Rod is a Yankee, but he’s also a cheater. But for now, he’s our cheater whether we like it or not.

Follow @GavinEwbank2013 on Twitter.

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