The climax of the NFL season is upon us. After two months of training camp and pre-season, seventeen weeks of regular season games, three weeks of playoff games, and one super crucial Media Hype Week, Super Bowl Sunday is fast approaching. So of course, it’s time to talk about Alex Rodriguez!

Long time readers of this blog will remember how it all began, with a post about A-Rod dumping his hot wife for that ancient sweathog Madonna. About six months later, there was this wonderful story about A-Rod possibly owning an oil painting depicting himself as a centaur.

Well, now it comes full circle. Madonna will be croaking a few of her fabulous 80s ditties at the Super Bowl this year, so of course she had to have a press conference as part of Hype Week. And of course, some shit-stirring Beantown reporter asked her about A-Rod’s rumored painting.

You can watch the video by following that link, but her response to the actual question was basically “I don’t know.” However, she also added “But I’m pretty sure he has a very large photograph of me lying on a horse.”

…wow. I can’t help but imagine both of those hanging side-by-side above A-Rod’s bed. And then I can’t help but wonder–does the man have a horse fetish?

And then I realize: I don’t want to know.

It’s been way too goddamn long since I’ve had anything to put in the “Alex Rodriguez” category, so it’s about time the guy did something stupid enough to get him back on here.

Unfortunately, as much as I want to, I have a hard time condemning him for what he’s allegedly done this time.  Which is: Play poker. That’s kind of it.  Oh, and maybe he saw some dude snort some cocaine. Oh, and this one guy, (not Alex Rodriguez, though) apparently tried to welsh on his poker debt.

Really?  That’s worth an investigation by MLB, and possibly the FBI? Now, it doesn’t surprise me much that the FBI cares about this, since they seem to have it in for poker (these are the same assholes who brought you Black Friday, after all.)  But MLB?  They care about A-Rod playing poker why?  I gather it has something to do with “associating with gamblers” which apparently got Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays banned for “life” back in the day (they got unbanned rather quickly.) They’re afraid he might have been in the same room with people who might have bet on baseball! THE HORROR!

First, let me say this. If there was a high stakes poker game going on (and it sure seems like there was,) I guaran-damn-tee that someone in that room has bet heavily on baseball at some time. That’s pretty much a given. High stakes poker players come in only two varities: Action junkies, and those who claim to not be action junkies but really are.   Now, I’m talking about the truly high, nose-bleed level stakes here.  Not the guys playing $100/$200 limit hold ‘em at Bellagio. Some of those guys are action junkies, but some of them are in the game grinding it out on their leather asses, squeezing every penny until Lincoln screams.  I’m talking about the games where more money is put in on the big blind than most people make in a month, games that take place in private rooms or at the palatial home of one of the players. Games where the stakes are high enough so that even a guy like A-Rod, who makes something like fixty hojillion dollars an at bat, might feel a little gut-punched after losing a big pot.  So yeah, at those stakes, it’s impossible to put together a game in which none of the guys have ever bet on baseball.  Most of those guys have bet on every sport you can think of.  Little league baseball, women’s softball, curling–if its ever been on TV, they’ve bet on it. They’ve bet on how long it’ll take the pizza guy to get there (and by “pizza guy” I of course mean “the guy they paid to go get them a pizza from the best pizzeria in town and bring it back to the game,” because none of those guys are ordering from Papa Johns, and none of them are getting up from the game as long as a whale like A-Rod is still there.) They’ve bet on who can go the longest without taking a shit, and probably made themselves sick trying to win. So it’s a given that they’ve bet on baseball.

But… so?. No really. So what? If just hanging around the wrong dudes is enough to get you fined or suspended in MLB, that seems really shitty. I mean, A-Rod is also known to be a friend of Pete Rose. OH SHIT BETTER FINE HIM FOR THAT TOO!

Another concern MLB has is that this game might be “perceived the wrong way” by the public. That’s clearly suit-talk for “Stop rubbing your wealth in people’s faces.” I know it’s fashionable currently to blame all problems everywhere on the richies, but I find it hard to get worked up about this. So the guy pissed away a few thousand bucks. Big deal, he’ll make that back and then some the next time he strikes out.  Whatever.

Now, I imagine I can hear a bunch of you out there howling “But the game was ILLEGAL! He was playing in an ILLEGAL GAME!” Ugh. That’s seriously the best you can do? Right, because everything that is illegal is automatically wrong. All I have to say to that is this: can you think of any example from any time in history of a government passing an unjust law?  I bet you can. I’m not going to insult you by pointing any out, because frankly if you can’t think of any, you’re too stupid to argue with anyhow. Also because, if I do, somebody, somewhere will get the idea into their fool head that I’m equating the stupidity of anti-gambling laws with the evils of whatever random thing I pick as another example of an unjust law.  Then I’ll be knee deep in assholes bleating “Are you saying the criminalization of gambling is as bad as X?  OMG UR SO STUPID!” And if you truly believe there’s a good argument to be made for making it illegal for people to gather together in private and wager on a game of cards, then there’s nothing I can say that’ll make you shut up anyhow.

But, hey.  It’s good to have A-Rod back in the news again!  I mean, for something other than being stupidly good at baseball.

It’s about time we had some more content related to Alex Rodriguez on this blog.  Considering he has his own category and was basically the entire inspiration for this blog, it’s a shame (for me) when he doesn’t do anything dumb for awhile, or some good things happen to him.

But, thankfully, we’ll always have vindictive ex-girlfriends looking to drag the man down.  And we’ll always have US Weekly, that great bastion of journalistic integrity, to give these ladies a forum.

This story has everything.  Well, everything I need for this blog, anyway.  Specifically, it has Alex Rodriguez, and it has Alex Rodriguez being an incredibly self-absorbed douchebag.

The dude allegedly has not one, but two paintings of himself as a centaur hanging in his bedroom.  Let me say that again in case you maybe missed it.  TWO paintings.  Of himself.  As a centaur.  In his own bedroom.

In his own bedroom!

I really don’t think I have to say any more, but I’m going to anyway, because I’m enjoying this so much.  Let’s just make sure we’re all on the same page here.  You know what a centaur is, right?  It’s a mythical half-horse, half-man creature.  It looks something like this here.  Although I find this one to be more representative of the species.

Teenage girls love them because they combine the hunky parts of men with the business parts of a horse.  I think.  Well, for some reason, anyway.  Bottom line is, nobody but teenage girls and women who never matured past the mental age of a teenage girl care anything at all about centaurs outside of D&D or maybe Harry Potter books.

Well, those people, and Alex Rodriguez I mean.  Apparently he loves centaurs so much he wants to be one.  And he went so far as to hire somebody to paint his portrait as one.  Twice.  And then, he hung them up in his bedroom just as if that’s something a totally normal person would do.

This totally makes up for him winning a World Series.

Seriously, roids aren’t that big a deal.  There I said it.  Yeah, they make you big, they help you heal faster, and they probably help you hit a baseball farther.  But you know what?  Home runs are cool.  I like to watch big sluggers.  Big Mac was entertaining.  Barry Bonds, when not being a horse’s ass, was fun to watch.  Sammy Sosa probably took roids, definitely corked his bat, and yet I’d rather watch him hit, than, say, Edgar Renteria.

In the end, roids aren’t a huge concern to me.  Yes, it’s cheating, but so is stealing signs, so is intentionally taking out an infielder with your slide, and so is scuffing a baseball–and those are all “accepted” (to varying degrees) parts of baseball.

But you cross the line from cheating into complete asshattery when you do what A-Rod has recently been accused of:  Tipping pitches to opposing players.  All those other things I mentioned?  They’re all to help you and your team do better and win games.  Which, at the end of the day, is what the game is all about.  But tipping off opposing players?  That’s just wrong, man.  Yeah, so A-Rod supposedly did it only in blowouts when the game was “already over”.  Nevermind that we’ve all seen ridiculous comebacks in baseball, so it’s hard to say when the game is “over”.  But let’s just assume that’s totally true:  Nothing A-Rod did affected the outcome of the game either way.

Even so, in your quest to pad your own stats (it is claimed this was done as a quid-pro-quo type thing with opposing middle infielders), you’re fucking with your own pitcher’s stats, man.  At the tail end of a blowout, you probably have some young kid out there trying to show what he’s got to the manager, trying to put some numbers up to get his career going, and you’re being a shitcock by tipping off the batter and telling him what’s coming?    Or maybe some old veteran at the tail end of his career is out there, looking for one last contract before he hits the showers for good, and you’re going to ram it up his ass by telling the batter to look for the backdoor slider?

So I say A-Rod, if this is true, you’re even more of a douche than I thought.

How dumb is Alex Rodriguez? Pretty dumb.

He gave up this:

Alex and Cynthia

To be with… this:

Alex and Madonna

Now don’t get me wrong, I like the older ladies as much as the next guy (provided the next guy is Alex Rodriguez) but come on. What exactly was he thinking? Nevermind that he ditched not just his wife, but their kids as well to be with this 50 year old hag. Forget that he’s already rich himself and doesn’t need to marry into her money. Just think about this: What happens when you mix orange and pasty white? Pray we never find out.