February 12, 2009

What Happens With A-Rod Doesn’t Stay With A-Rod

I feel the need to state that no performance-enhancing drugs have been employed in preparing this or any previous column.

There. That feels better. For me, at least. I know some of you (including my editor) are probably wishing I would take something at least thought-enhancing.

New York Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez – and other figures in the news – probably wish they had as well.

Let’s see, what’s worse?

a)       Cheating on the field (A-Rod, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and 100-plus others)

b)      Cheating on your wife (A-Rod, Clemens)

c)       Cheating on your taxes (Tom Daschle and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner)

d)      Cheating your public through bald-faced lies, some reaching to the level of perjury (all the aforementioned)

The answer – none of the above. Cheating is cheating is cheating is cheating.

I’m with Ross Perot, who asserted that he would never hire a man he knew to be cheating on his wife (much less elect him president). Because if you can’t trust a man to keep his wedding vows, you can’t trust him with anything.

Cheating on your wife, on your tax returns, in your public statements and even in baseball are all part and parcel of the same phenomenon. Let’s dub it the Happens-in-Vegas Syndrome.

You know the commercial: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” And three guesses where that sentiment came from. (First two don’t count.) Yep, anyone who has read Jim Bouton’s Ball Four knows that decades ago, there were signs hanging in most if not all Major League clubhouses to the same effect: What happens here, stays here.

There may be no crying in baseball: but drug use, corked bats, drinking, teammates steppin’ out? All “part of the culture,” in A-Rod’s phraseology. And Sin City? Gambling, one-night stands, girls-and-guys-gone-wild bachelor and bachelorette parties? Mum’s the word, baby.

It’s all about me. And anything goes – as long as no one tells.

Yeah, ask the folks at Fannie Mae about that. Not to mention Wall Street. Not to mention all of us who have watched our 401(k)s dip lower than A-Rod’s October batting average.

And P.S.: Someone always tells (or has a camera). Ask Daschle, Geithner, A-Rod, the Rocket and especially Michael Phelps about that.

OK, we all get why cabinet nominees – who seek public service – deserve their time on the rack. But why should A-Rod’s and Clemens’s cheatin’ hearts matter to the rest of us?

Because the Happens-in-Vegas grab-it-tude – that our private lives (lying about sex) are none of anyone’s business and that personal sins should be quietly celebrated – has trickled down from clubhouses and celebrities and politicians to permeate our culture.

And what happens in Vegas – what happens with A-Rod and in the baseball clubhouse, in movies, on the Internet, in capitals and the Oval Office, at work, on campus, in real-estate offices and inside and outside of marriages – doesn’t stay in any of those places.

It spawns Enrons and Tycos and earmarks and pols on the take. It leads to trillion-dollar bailouts and stimulus packages, to waves of foreclosures, to lenders too afraid to lend and investors too skittish to invest. It breaks out in rampant divorce, millions of abortions, epidemics of sexually transmitted disease, impoverished single-parent households and troubled kids.

If we ever hope to preserve and renew trust in our government, our businesses, our institutions and each other, perhaps what happens with A-Rod – cheating and hiding it – has to stop happening with each of us, in Vegas or wherever.

Not necessarily thought-enhancing. But, one hopes, thought-provoking.