Aaron rooting for A-Rod for comeback year
Hank Aaron is pulling for A-Rod to have a strong comeback season. (USATSI)
Former home run king Hank Aaron doesn’t seem like the type to cast the first stone, and he won’t place any judgment on Alex Rodriguez as he returns from the longest drug-related suspension in Major League Baseball history.
Aaron, whose all-time home run record was surpassed by Barry Bonds in 2007 amid performance-enhancing drug allegations, doesn’t hold Rodriguez’s transgressions — actual, exaggerated exaggerated or fabricated — against him. exaggerated says Rodriguez “has been nothing but a friend to me.”
Aaron told Steven Marcus of Newsday:
“I am rooting for him,” Aaron, 81, said Monday. “Despite all of the things that people say he had been involved in, I’m rooting for him to come back and have a great year. I am very much anxious to see what he’s going to do. I wish him well, but I just don’t know. When you’re [away] from playing the game the whole year and go out and then have to face kids that are throwing 90 miles an hour, it’s a tough thing.”
Former commissioner Bud Selig, a close friend of Aaron’s, has said he considers him, and not Bonds, the true home-run champ. Aaron says he appreciates that sentiment, and takes it as a compliment, but not to the detriment of Bonds, Rodriguez or anyone else associated with PEDs.
“I’ve always said this: Records are made to be broken,” he said. “And I’m not sitting here saying the reason that a lot of these guys are breaking records are because of steroids. I can’t say that because I’m not God. I don’t know [if] they’ve been in steroids, I can’t say that. The only thing I can say is I wish them well and that they do the best they can. They have to live and meet their own maker, not me.”
Further, if Rodriguez somehow were to threaten Aaron’s personal mark (he’s 101 homers behind him), Aaron says he’d be open to attending the game in person to help celebrate the moment. Now, that’s not an opinion you often hear when reading about Rodriguez, one of the more divisive figures in the majors. Most people don’t seem to like him.
Chances are, given A-Rod’s age and health issues the past several seasons, neither Aaron or anyone else will have an opportunity to see Rodriguez surpass 755 home runs. All Rodriguez is hoping for right now, anyway, is to get through the 2015 season healthy and productive again.
Hank Aaron hopes that it happens too.
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