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Wow, this one ranks right up there with some of the most famous denials of all time:

“I did not have sex with that woman.”  (Bill Clinton)

“I am not a crook.”  (Richard Nixon)

“I’ve done nothing wrong.”  (Rod Blagojevich)

And now…”No.”

That was the answer Alex Rodriguez gave to Katie Couric back in 2007 when asked point-blank if he had taken any sort of performance-enhancing drugs.  Now, since it has come out that he has indeed taken performance-enhancing drugs, his memory has returned and, oh wait, maybe he did partake of some of them there drug things after all:

His voice shaking at times, Alex Rodriguez met head-on allegations that he tested positive for steroids six years ago, telling ESPN on Monday that he did take performance-enhancing drugs while playing for the Texas Rangers during a three-year period beginning in 2001.

“When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day,” Rodriguez told ESPN’s Peter Gammons in an exclusive interview in Miami Beach, Fla.

“Back then, [baseball] was a different culture,” Rodriguez said. “It was very loose. I was young. I was stupid. I was naive. And I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time.

“I did take a banned substance. And for that, I am very sorry and deeply regretful.” [...]

Rodriguez’s admission comes 48 hours after Sports Illustrated reported that Rodriguez was on a list of 104 players who tested positive for banned substances in 2003, the year when Major League Baseball conducted survey tests to see if mandatory, random drug-testing was needed in the sport.

Sources who know about the testing results told SI that Rodriguez tested positive for testosterone and Primobolan, an anabolic steroid. In his ESPN interview, which his ex-wife, Cynthia, attended, Rodriguez said he did not know exactly which substance or substances he had taken. In 2003, there were no penalties for a positive result.

“Again, it was such a loosey-goosey era,” Rodriguez said. “I’m guilty for a lot of things. I’m guilty for being negligent, naive, not asking all the right questions. And to be quite honest, I don’t know exactly what substance I was guilty of using.”

A three-time AL Most Valuable Player, Rodriguez blamed himself and his $252 million contract he signed with the Rangers in 2001 for his decision to use PEDs.

“I felt a tremendous pressure to play, and play really well” in Texas, the New York Yankees third baseman said. “I had just signed this enormous contract … I felt like I needed something, a push, without over-investigating what I was taking, to get me to the next level.”

Rodriguez also said part of the reason he started using drugs was the heat in Texas.

“Can I have an edge just to get out there and play every day?” he said to himself. “You basically end up trusting the wrong people. You end up, you know, not being very careful about what you’re ingesting.”

Rodriguez added: “I am sorry for my Texas years. I apologize to the fans of Texas.”

Rodriguez, who joined the Yankees for the 2004 season after a trade from Texas, said his years as a Yankee “have been clean.”

“I’ve played the best baseball of my career since,” he said. “I’ve won two MVPs since and I’ve never felt better in my career. Of that I’m very proud of.”

And what do the Yankees have to say about this admission?

“We urged Alex to be completely open, honest and forthcoming in addressing his use of performance-enhancing drugs,” it read. “We take him at his word that he was. Although we are disappointed in the mistake he spoke to today, we realize that Alex — like all of us –is a human being not immune to fault.

“We speak often about the members of this organization being part of a family, and that is never more true than in times of adversity. Alex took a big step by admitting his mistake, and while there is no condoning the use of performance-enhancing drugs, we respect his decision to take accountability for his actions. We support Alex, and we will do everything we can to help him deal with this challenge and prepare for the upcoming season.”

*waves hand*  I have a couple of questions?

Why should we believe anything this guy says?  It isn’t like he’s exactly had a record of telling the truth at all times.  If he lied about taking drugs as recently as 2007, what makes us believe he is telling the truth now?  And what is this excuse, “I didn’t know what I was taking”?  Are we to believe that there was a guy in the shadowy corner of the Rangers locker room saying, “Psst…c’mere…hey, I got somethin’ that’ll make you feel reeeeeeeeal good, make you play reeeeeeeal good ball, you wanna play good ball, huh?  You wanna hit that ball good?  You do a couple of these, you feel mighty fine!”  And Alex, out of his total naivete, just decided to pop or swallow or be injected with whatever the person with the needle or the pill bottle gave him, without even asking what it was, or even what it was for?  Did he believe the guy was giving him an injection to clear up his complexion?

And what about the Yankees?  By the looks of things, they are standing behind A-Fraud:

Rodriguez has four fewer World Series rings than Derek Jeter or Mariano Rivera, but at this stage in their careers, Rodriguez, not the other iconic Yankees, is the face of the franchise. Because Rodriguez is tied to the Yankees for nine more years and about $250 million, he is the player the team is built around, tainted or not.

So, even though Rodriguez admitted to being a cheat, the Yankees have taken the stance that he is their reformed cheat and that they will support him. Unless the Yankees were willing to take a monstrous financial hit to try to shed Rodriguez, something they did not consider, their only option was to back him and trust that he told the truth by saying his steroid use ended six years ago.

So, if you are a professional athlete making millions upon millions of dollars, it is okay to take illegal drugs (one of the drugs in his system is illegal to market or sell in the US), as long as you come “clean” about it…eventually, when you’re forced to by somebody who found the evidence, and after you’ve already lied about it for years.  You’ll still collect your full paycheck, you’ll still get all your benefits, you don’t have to worry about things like your home being taken away or ending up on the streets or your children starving…because you can hit a ball and run real fast.  Oh, and as far as the drugs being illegal in the US?  Well, it wasn’t against baseball law at the time, so it’s okay after all.  You know, loosey-goosey.

Don’t get me wrong, I love sports.  I’ve got teams and individuals I follow and am fans of in the sports world.  I’ve spent my hard-earned money supporting my favorite sports.  I believe that sport does offer us a welcome respite from the pressures of the real world, a chance to sit for a few hours and just enjoy watching a ball game or a race or a match.  But what do these people do, really, that makes them worth $250 million dollars?  And what makes them so special that, when they are forced to admit they took illegal drugs, they can still participate in their chosen field?

Back in the day when I worked a real job, we had this little thing called a drug policy.  Basically, it was this…if you showed up at work on drugs, you got fired.  My husband works a real job, and they have a drug policy.  If you show up for work on drugs, you get fired.  In A-Rod Land, you show up for work, get your drugs at work, and collect millions of dollars.  Score!

But how much responsibility do others hold in this little fiasco?  We live in a society of supply and demand.  If we, the sports-viewing public, demand bigger and better and faster, the players and coaches and trainers feel obligated to supply bigger and better and faster.  Maybe if these players weren’t marketed as little gods, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and maybe if we realized that these sports figures are just people after all, there wouldn’t be quite so much pressure to do this stuff.  Or maybe there would be…after all, it’s just part of human nature to want to be better than the next guy, but it is our own strength within ourselves that makes us realize where the line is drawn.

A-Fraud may or may not be taking PED’s now.  Quite frankly, you have to question anything that comes out of his mouth these days because he has lied about it for so long.  But even if he isn’t, you can bet your tintype that somebody in baseball is.  For that matter, pick a sport, and there will be somebody in there taking drugs, some of which will enhance their performance in their game.  And still they prosper.  I guess the rules are different in Sports Hero Land.

However, it comes down to this…Alex could have said no, and he didn’t.  He ultimately made the decision to take performance-enhancing drugs, and he made the decision to repeatedly lie about them, and he made the decision to not say anything until he got caught.  Like the little boy who cried wolf, I just don’t know whether to believe him.  Unfortunately, this isn’t something we can make a call on now…because only time will tell if he is truly clean or if he is just blowing smoke.