Baseball is been down this road before. In fact, it has been down this way so many times in recent years, the problems are still the same, it is just the names which are different.

The past week has seen the one player who baseball purists believed could dethrone the tainted Home Run King and rightfully stake his claim at the top of list, fall from grace and not gingerly.

Alex Rodriguez admitted to ESPN in an interview he willingly and knowingly took a substance to make himself a better player while a member of the Texas Rangers. He claimed he did this because he felt pressure after signing the largest contract in Major League Baseball history.

Then at his “press conference,” Rodriguez amended his statement to say he had his cousin inject him with a drug from the Dominican Republic because of the pressure and because he was “young and stupid.”

Rodriguez took the approach several other players and former players have taken. When asked if he ever took steroids or any performance-enhancing drugs a few years ago, Rodriguez flat out denied any involvement in the lifestyle.

And who would attempt to contradict his statements?

A-Rod jumped into the Seattle Mariners’ lineup nearly right out of high school and we watched him put up incredible numbers as he matured and his body developed with him. He never had the Barry Bonds syndrome where he was a 99-pound weakling one season and appeared as a muscular 225-pound linebacker the next year in spring training.

But like Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, Rodriguez felt he had to be better than he was the year before.

Rodriguez was considered to be the best player in baseball while in Seattle and Texas and is still thought of as the best in New York. No other player can hit for average or power the way he has in his career, steroids or no steroids. If he has one weakness, it is in the post-season, but for many the playoffs have been their Achilles heel.

No one can forgive Rodriguez for lying about his use of an illegal substance because there was no witch hunt to prosecute players for using a drug, while illegal to possess in the country, it was not against the rules to use in baseball.

The general public would have rallied around Rodriguez if he would have said, “I saw the McGwires, the Sosas, the Clemens’ using performance-enhancing drugs around me and I decided to try it as well because it seemed to give them a edge over me and I didn’t want to fall behind. It was cheating, but given the atmosphere of baseball at the time, no one looked at it that way.”

Would that have thrown those players under the bus? Yes, but it wouldn’t have given a real reason as to trying a drug, not the “young and stupid” approach Rodriguez and his team of handlers thought the American public would just readily accept.

I had the opportunity to meet Rodriguez in the winter before he moved on to Texas at a banquet where he appeared with former player Tino Martinez. This is right around the time when Rodriguez was beginning to feel the pressure of living up to being the highest paid player on the planet.

I didn’t see that A-Rod. I met a person who was down-to-earth, very friendly, and seemed to be like a young child in the candy store with $5 in his pocket. He knew he had the world on a string, was playing a kid’s game and still enjoyed waking up every day to pursue his profession.

Rodriguez may be older and now living and playing in the big aquarium known as New York, but he knows he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and will have to pay for his indiscretion for the rest of his career.