He needed to be clean and real, not A-Fraud. If baseball ever was to move forward, past the integrity-scarring scandals that exposed a sport as dirty and the commissioner and owners as conspirators, Alex Rodriguez had to be juice-free. It was one way we could bury the Steroids Era, with A-Rod chasing down the symbolic bloated head -- Barry Bonds -- and breaking his home-run record as America cheered truth, justice and the untainted dinger.Well, so much for the Superhero ending. As we all should realize by now, baseball has been too scummy the last two decades for fairy tales.




