Controversy Around A-Rod; Nothing New

Well, it seems as though once again, Alex Rodriguez cannot avoid scandals in the media. It was first reported by SI.com that A-Rod failed a steroid test in 2003, a season in which he blasted, a career high, 57 HRs. This story has already been interpreted many different ways: some say it was only a matter of time, others say they knew it all along, even some think he should be suspended! Well that last one isn't happening because the test was more of an anonymous survey that MLB held just to see if players were "doping." They then planned on destroying all testing records (which obviously didn't work). This means that A-Rod failing the "test" will have no repercussions. He also won't have any issues with the Yankees organization as all of this happened before he joined the team, and they had no knowledge (he may have not either) of any of this. 

So what's to make of this whole thing? Should we be angry? Sad? Maybe even happy (Red Sox fans)? Well I say, it's nothing new. A-Rod always has, and always will have scandals surrounding him in the media and to help illustrate this point, I've created a little summary of the scandals he's had in the past:

2001: Signed a 10-year, $252mm contract with the Texas Rangers. The contract immediately drew media attention as it was the largest in MLB history (a record he still owns). 

2005: Was bashed for his lousy playoff performance when he only hit .133 in October.

2006: Once again drilled for even worse playoff performance: he only had one hit and was doing so badly that Joe Torre even dropped him down to 8th in the lineup. There were even talks of trading him during the off-season.

2007: A-Rod's (now ex-) wife, Cynthia, was seen wearing a shirt that said **** you at one of her husband's games. Later in the year, A-Rod said he had been tested for steroids 10 times, which the media quickly caught onto as no player would be tested that many times unless they had tested positive in the past. A-Rod quickly came back and said that he was merely exaggerating the number.

2008: The media caught on to a possible scandal involving A-Rod and pop-signer Madonna. It was reported that A-Rod spent many late nights at her house doing, what he said was, "helping her son with baseball." All of this was happening during his divorce with his wife, and mother of his two daughters, Cynthia. 

2009: You already know.

So as you can see, this is nothing new for A-Rod as he has had to deal with controversy in the media quite a bit in his great career. The only challenge now, is figuring out an effective way of dealing with it and not letting it slip into his mind (as it has in the past). The one positive thing I would like to say about this topic however, is that as we've seen in previous years, A-Rod always follows up big (see 2007).