But not, necessarily, for the reason you might think.
(CNN) -- Alex Rodriguez says his record contract makes him an attractive target for a baseball ban or suspension, and may play a major role in his current woes.
The slugger with a stellar batting average faces allegations involving the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). ESPN reported he is in negotiations with Major League Baseball over a possible suspension of his contract, the largest in the history of American sports.
"There is more than one party that benefits from me not ever stepping back on the field -- and that's not my teammates and it's not the Yankee fans," Rodriguez said Friday night at a news conference in Trenton, New Jersey, following a minor-league game that was supposed to prepare him to rejoin the New York Yankees.
He would not specify the parties that stood to gain from banning him over the PED scandal, but he said, "when all this stuff is going on in the background and people are finding creative ways to cancel your contract and stuff like that, I think that's concerning for me."
Rodriguez, a three-time American League Most Valuable Player, and the Yankees signed the 10-year deal for $275 million in 2007.
Rodriguez, 38, has missed the entire 2013 season after undergoing hip surgery. He could return to the Yankees after a second rehab game in Trenton on Saturday.
He has admitted in the past to using performance-enhancing drugs, but he also has denied taking any after 2003. He has never been suspended by the league for a drug violation.
The temptation, when reading about the trials and tribulations of this generation's sports stars, is to overly romanticize the sports stars of generations past.
A lack of good news tends to inspire a lot of "good old days" reminiscence.
But sentiment can be a slippery slope.
Every generation has had its share of famous, but flawed, professional sports heroes.
Mickey Mantle was revered in the fifties and sixties.
While pretty much always battling simultaneous addictions to womanizing and alcohol.
Pete Rose was a baseball superstar for decades.
All the while keeping hidden his compulsion to bet on everything and anything.
Ty Cobb was a megastar in the baseball world of the early 1900's.
But his reputation for aggressive, even physically threatening, play was well known and not exactly an endearing quality.
And, when it comes to fallen sports heroes, everybody else can sit down when O.J. walks into the room.
Whenever O.J. is finally freed to actually walk into a room.
The only real difference between the fallen idols of yesteryear and those who fall today is the awareness we have of their various flaws and foibles, sometimes even as those flaws are showing themselves.
Imagine the You Tube, Twitter, Facebook technology dogging Pete Rose every time he got within a C note of a bookie.
None of this is meant to endorse or condone the kind of behavior that, ideally, we deserve when we spend our hard earned dollars to watch these people make a very, very, very good living at what is nothing more, or less, than playing a game.
And, in the interest of full disclosure, I should probably mention that I think Alex Rodriquez is a punk.
Overrated, overpaid, spoiled beyond measure and a disgrace to the idea, if not the reality, of what the game of baseball is supposed to, ideally, be about.
But it's not his flaws as a human being that turn me off.
My own house is constructed of sufficient amounts of glass to prevent that.
And its not his use of banned substances that make me think he will, inevitably, become little more than a sad footnote in the history of a once great American pastime.
A lack of good news tends to inspire a lot of "good old days" reminiscence.
But sentiment can be a slippery slope.
Every generation has had its share of famous, but flawed, professional sports heroes.
Mickey Mantle was revered in the fifties and sixties.
While pretty much always battling simultaneous addictions to womanizing and alcohol.
Pete Rose was a baseball superstar for decades.
All the while keeping hidden his compulsion to bet on everything and anything.
Ty Cobb was a megastar in the baseball world of the early 1900's.
But his reputation for aggressive, even physically threatening, play was well known and not exactly an endearing quality.
And, when it comes to fallen sports heroes, everybody else can sit down when O.J. walks into the room.
Whenever O.J. is finally freed to actually walk into a room.
The only real difference between the fallen idols of yesteryear and those who fall today is the awareness we have of their various flaws and foibles, sometimes even as those flaws are showing themselves.
Imagine the You Tube, Twitter, Facebook technology dogging Pete Rose every time he got within a C note of a bookie.
None of this is meant to endorse or condone the kind of behavior that, ideally, we deserve when we spend our hard earned dollars to watch these people make a very, very, very good living at what is nothing more, or less, than playing a game.
And, in the interest of full disclosure, I should probably mention that I think Alex Rodriquez is a punk.
Overrated, overpaid, spoiled beyond measure and a disgrace to the idea, if not the reality, of what the game of baseball is supposed to, ideally, be about.
But it's not his flaws as a human being that turn me off.
My own house is constructed of sufficient amounts of glass to prevent that.
And its not his use of banned substances that make me think he will, inevitably, become little more than a sad footnote in the history of a once great American pastime.
No, my belief that A-Rod's days are numbered is based on the comments made in that news conference described above.
And the accompanying revelation that there's a physical issue that is very likely going to turn out to be a career ender.
Alex Rodriquez ,obviously, and sadly, is no longer limber.
lim·ber 1
(l
m
b
r)
mbr)
adj.
1. Bending or flexing readily; pliable.
2. Capable of moving, bending, or contorting easily; supple.
And the loss of this bodily skill is catastrophic to someone trying to excel at the very physical game of baseball.
Again, in the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I have no formal medical training and no credentials that would allow me to offer a professional opinion.
I'm going with a gut feeling based on what Rodriquez is saying in defense of his behavior.
Unmistakable evidence that he no longer has the ability to bend his arm...
...enough to allow for pointing the finger of blame at himself.
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