TJ Walker breaks down Alex Rodriguez's apology letter, saying it fails because it never actually names what he's apologizing for. Walker argues the real problem runs deeper: leagues and governing bodies let PEDs flourish by not testing rigorously enough, pressuring athletes into cheating.
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Alex Rodriguez, the New York Yankees baseball player, has sent a handwritten apology to his fans. So this apology note, and it's handwritten to fans, says essentially, I'm sorry, I take full responsibility for my mistakes. He says some of the right things. But here's the problem with his apology. It doesn't really say what he's apologizing for. Is he apologizing for using steroids? Using steroids at the wrong time after they were officially banned? Is he apologizing for lying about it last year? What exactly is he apologizing for? By that standard, this apology is an abysmal failure because an apology should be clear. You should make people understand exactly what it is you're talking about. I can't figure out what he's talking about here. Neither can a lot of other observers. If you're giving an apology and it seems like you're still trying to create smoke, that simply doesn't help. Now let's figure out how this affects Alex Rodriguez. Is he still going to be able to play for a few more years and retire fabulously healthy at an age that is still considered incredibly young, in his early 40s? Sure. So let's not shed too many tears for Alex Rodriguez. However, is he going to be someone who goes into the hall of Fame, is given cushy broadcast jobs, is seen as an elder statesman of Major League Baseball for decades to come? That is a lot more doubtful and increasingly unlikely. Now. I've linked below and on my blog, the entire apology he has penned. You can judge for it yourself. Here's the problem I do have with this whole situation. It's easy to get up on your high horse and say, well, he cheated. How dare he. And let me also just say that there are few people in the world who know less about Major League baseball or professional sports than I do. It's not a passion of mine, but here is my understanding, my basic understanding of these performance enhancing drugs, these steroids, whether it's for baseball, whether it's for Lance Armstrong. Other sports is that you've got trainers, advisors to athletes, saying, all, look, everyone is doing this, all of your competitors are doing this, and it's giving them a 2% or some percentage boost. And if you don't do this drug, you're going to fall from the very elite to the next category. Well, the next category is an unpaid amateur. And in many, many sports, like baseball, where we're talking about just, you know, microseconds being the difference between hitting a ball and not hitting a ball, hitting it out of the park versus a pop up teeny tiny. Less than 1% differences can make a huge difference. So these advisors are telling athletes, the Alex Rodriguez's of the world, the Lance Armstrong's of the world, here's your choice. Take this drug, remain competitive, continue to do well, or don't take the drug, everyone else is. You're no longer going to be competitive, your career is over. And remember, cheating is when you have an unfair advantage. If all your competitors are doing this, it's not cheating. It's just playing on a level playing field. I'm not saying I buy all that, folks. I'm just saying that is my understanding of how an awful lot of athletes get started into this. That's the pitch they're given. Again, it's easy for you and me to stand up and say, oh well, you're just saying everybody does it, so that makes it okay. I'm not saying just because everybody does something makes it okay. But I can tell you this. I thought about it in my own situation. What if there were some international federation of media trainers, some governing body, and they banned the use of a particular vitamin or brain pill. And then my advisors came to me and said, okay, TJ if you don't take the pill, your competitors are going to destroy you. You're not going to get any more business. You're going to be a homeless poor bum on the streets. If you do take the pill, which all of your competitors are using, you'll make millions of dollars a year. What would I do in that situation? What would you do in that situation? Things get a little murkier there. I'm not saying Alex Rodriguez is some hero that little children need to look up to, because I don't particularly think any athlete is someone that most people need to look up to other than admiration for a particular discipline and working hard on something. But I do think the larger culprit here is in all of these leagues, all of these sporting organizations that want to have it both ways, they want the best performing athletes, but they don't really do absolutely everything they could to create a level playing field by testing, frequently, surprise testing, and doing everything they can to weed out the drug. So to me, the far bigger culprit here are the sporting leagues themselves and the governing bodies, not the individual athletes. Anyway, that's taken us away from some of our typical themes of media training here. But context is important when coming up with messages. So in summary, Alex Rodriguez apology isn't going to help him that much. It's not going to hurt him that much. But there are bigger issues at play. There are bigger reputations that are being sullied. And it's not the athletes. It's the institutions. I'm TJ Walker. Post your comments.
