Posted by Bill Baer on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 1:26 pm

Last week, I suggested that we baseball fans should end our hate affair with Alex Rodriguez because most of us are just jealous of many or all of the positive qualities he has, such as being rich, popular, and good-looking. There’s another reason that I failed to mention. In fact, it didn’t really hit me until a couple days ago.

Our treatment of A-Rod after he had come clean has given athletes no incentive to tell the truth when they are asked questions or even test positive. The rationale always included a reference to Jason Giambi, how most of us have eased up off of him since he admitted and apologized for using steroids. A-Rod came clean and apologized, just like Giambi, but we continue to use ink and paper, and bandwidth to vilify him which never happened with Giambi.

Other athletes, who we’ve yet to catch, will look at our treatment of A-Rod and conclude that there is no incentive for them to come out with the truth either on their own or when they are prompted. Look at their options:

A) Don’t admit to using. Media and public presume I used anyway, assassinating my character in print and on the Internet. With presumption, media and public suggest altering my statistics, taking away my accomplishments like MVP or Cy Young awards, and keeping me out of the Hall of Fame.

B) Admit to using. Media and public assassinate my character in print and on the Internet. Media and public suggest altering my statistics, taking away my accomplishments like MVP or Cy Young awards, and keeping me out of the Hall of Fame.

If we are truly interested in uncovering the darkness of the steroid era, then we need to provide incentives for players in-the-know to tell the truth. We can’t have our cake and eat it too — we can’t expect players to tell us the truth when we are going to officially (i.e. suspension) and socially sanction them (i.e. negative press) for doing so.

Let’s stop the silly arguments about amending career numbers or keeping players out of the Hall of Fame for using steroids. It’s hypocritical and it will curse our attempts to ascertain information about the steroid era.

We should be praising A-Rod and others who have come clean and apologized. We consider honesty a virtue, right? Prove it — LEAVE A-ROD ALONE! (Link NSFW)