A-Rod Gets a Third (Fourth? Fifth?) Chance.

NBA ownership could buff out a few of those scratches

Thank you for reading The Dope.

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Because Alex Rodriguez is a walking contradiction, a Hall of Fame caliber player who still thought he needed to cheat, his baseball legacy will be is a mixed bag. A-Rod is likely to be remembered more as a part of the era in which he played than for his own remarkable statistical achievements in the game. He is a three-time MVP who clubbed 696 home runs while batting .295 over 23 years — but only 22 seasons, because he was suspended for all of 2014. Steroids.

Rodriguez has also demonstrated, in his post-playing years, the ability to polarize entire segments of the sports-loving country. His insistence on inserting himself into the baseball broadcasting landscape despite the shame he brought to the game is a testament to his breathtaking ego, yes, but it is that same ego that helped him build a massive business empire in part by successfully finding ways to monetize both his MLB renown and his infamy.

People can’t stand A-Rod, or so they say, but they’ve watched him plenty as he bloviated on Fox Sports, Shark Tank and any other broadcast vehicle he could use as a landing spot in furtherance of his image rehab. I mean, Barry Bonds at least had the decency to go away for a while, and people are starting to warm up to Bonds now. Rodriguez just never stopped being in your face.

Get used to that. As of Wednesday’s formal announcement, A-Rod and his business partner Marc Lore are set to take complete ownership of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves and WNBA’s Lynx. It is a deal valued at $1.5 billion, and that is likely only the start of the money that Rodriguez and Lore (and their investors) will spend to pursue boss-man glory.

Can Alex Rodriguez buy a revision of his own history? Why not? It isn’t as though he’d be the first.

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It’s hard to follow sports and not involuntarily chuckle whenever a poobah makes reference to “the steroid era,” as though it were confined to a single space or span of history. Bud Selig, the former MLB commissioner, used to do that all the time, a desperate attempt to declare baseball somehow clear of the problem. But baseball was always pockmarked by players using substances to cheat — or to “gain an edge,” if that phrase makes you feel better, and as long as you don’t give a damn about the career arcs of competitors who got beat by these guys because they wouldn’t cheat.

The players knew they were crooked for doing so, but they did it all the same. They’re still doing it, some of them right now. Atlanta’s Jurickson Profar just took an 80-game suspension after testing positive for the performance-enhancing substance human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). This is a fertility drug that aids in the production of testosterone, and it is routinely employed as a sort of replacement therapy after one has used steroids. Positive tests for this same drug got Manny Ramirez suspended for 50 games in 2009, so, you know, old school.

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Alex Rodriguez was an amazing player, off-the-charts skilled. When he signed the first of his many mega-deals, this one to leave Seattle and join the Texas Rangers, he says he felt “an enormous amount of pressure” to perform. So he started using steroids. We don’t need to rehash everything that came after that, but suffice it to say that from the Rangers through his tenure with the Yankees and well beyond, Rodriguez has alternately admitted to and lied about his drug use, even though it clearly continued through his playing days.

It also led to behemoth baseball numbers, but Hall of Fame voters haven’t forgotten the cheating. A-Rod’s HOF vote totals have stagnated at about 35%, nowhere close to the 75% approval needed for election.

But wait! He will remain on the ballot through 2031.

And maybe, by then — just possibly? — Rodriguez will be first known as the very successful owner of an NBA/WNBA juggernaut in Minnesota, as opposed to the player who got caught up in “the steroid era” and just felt “enormous pressure” to cheat his ass off.

If a guy chases down championships for a franchise that really wants to win a few, the people would have to reconsider his Hall of Fame worthiness. Right?

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I actually have no guesses as to how it plays out. For all I know, by 2031 the Baseball Writers Association of America will no longer be the body conducting and sanctioning the Hall of Fame voting. The Hall is a private entity and can do what it wants.

But I have no doubt that Rodriguez (a.) genuinely loves the idea of owning sports teams, (b.) genuinely loves to compete and (c.) genuinely thinks that he can write a revision of his sports-life story if he becomes a benevolent winner in Minnesota. He’s a business guy and he unquestionably wants to make a buck out of this deal, but A-Rod is at heart incredibly shrewd — and incapable of shame — when it comes to his own public image.

Put another way: He will do almost anything to be remembered well, after having done almost everything to make that a Sisyphean task. It’ll be fascinating to watch.

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