Alex Rodriguez talks about his life, baseball career and PED use in a three-part HBO Max series. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
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There’s a voice that comes from off-screen at the outset of the HBO Max three-part documentary Alex vs. A-Rod, asking Alex Rodriguez if he’s going to be honest about using performance-enhancing drugs during his 22-year Major League Baseball career.
Here was his two-pronged response:
“I mean, I’ll give you two answers to the same question. You tell me which one you’d rather have. Oh, what happened with the PEDs in baseball is that everyone was doing it. There were 15 of us. They gave me the longest [suspension] of the 15. But look, at the end of the day I’m a pretty [bleeping] great baseball player. I’m going to appeal it.
“That’s No. 1. No. 2 is, yeah I [bleeped] up. I knew the rules. I broke them. I was a dumbass. I served the longest suspension in Major League history. And it sucked, but I deserved it.”
There you have it. This column is as much about Alex Rodriguez as it is about my 2026 National Baseball Hall of Fame ballot. It’s the weakest class in 30 years, but A-Rod makes it along with Carlos Beltran, Andy Pettitte, Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins.
It’s a tainted ballot. Not one of the newcomers is Hall of Fame worthy. Beltran barely passes the sniff test because of his part in the Houston Astros sign-stealing fiasco of 2017, his last of 20 years as a player. Pettitte admitted to using HGH, Human Growth Hormone. They certainly aren’t perfect. There are three other candidates involved with sexual assault and two arrested for hitting their wives. I didn’t vote for any of them.
Rodriguez is a complicated athlete, and our relationship has always been problematic. But he is one of the best baseball players of all time, despite doing PEDs. Mull this factoid: Only two players in history have more than 600 homers, 3,000 base hits, 2,000 RBIs and 2,000 runs scored. Hank Aaron is one of them and Rodriguez is the other.
This is A-Rod’s fifth of 10 years on the annual Baseball Writers’ Association of America ballot since his career ended in mid-2016 with the New York Yankees. In 2025, he earned 146 votes, or 37.1%. He needed 296 to be elected, or like all Hall votes, 75%.
Here’s why he’s back on my ballot:
Part 1 of his answer in Alex vs. A-Rod was obviously A-Rod speaking. Part 2 was allegedly Alex, who does not project as a particularly sympathetic figure during the three hours the filmmakers take to traverse his journey.
But the Part 2 mea culpa is more than we’ve gotten from Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Manny Ramirez and a host of other baseball players either suspected to have done PEDs or, like Rodriguez, caught red-handed. A-Rod didn’t test positive for PEDs, but he was caught through medical records in an analytical finding and suspended for a record 211 games.
Through collectively bargained arbitration, that suspension was reduced to 162 games, which he served during the entire 2014 season.
During the course of the documentary, we found he lied, fought the system and ultimately acquiesced when reality finally persevered. That’s an accurate depiction of what actually happened. He skirted suspension early in his career when with the Texas Rangers, he admitted doing PEDs. This occurred in 2003 just when drug testing in MLB became the norm. Aside from an assault on his character, there were no other consequences.
He thought he could outrun it all, but he couldn’t.
“I found out the hard way,” he said.
When confronted with injuries and an aging body – he ultimately had surgery on both hips and a knee – Rodriguez was introduced to Anthony Bosch, the owner of a Miami clinic called Biogenesis of America. A scraggly looking Bosch took a look at A-Rod’s upper body and told him he had just the elixir for him: HGH.
“At that point I knew that if I did this I would be breaking a Major League Baseball rule,” Rodriguez said with an obvious pained look on his face during the third episode. “At the time I knew it was a very, very risky thing to do. But if this is actually going to make me feel better and help me get out of bed and help me not be in pain, then (bleep) it. I’ll risk it.”
Rodriguez said he began with the idea he’d only used HGH for a short period of time, but once he started he quickly reached the point of no return.
“Once I tried it you’re on the wrong side,” he added. “And you broke a Major League Baseball rule. So, I knew I did it, and I knew I was breaking a rule. It was like that moment when you go too far, and you go, I can’t take it back now.”
A-Rod returned from the suspension and at 40 had a redemptive comeback season in 2015 as a designated hitter for the Yankees. In 2016, he strained a right hamstring early and simply ran out of gas, finishing with 696 home runs and in a 2-for-28 slump. He had been relegated to the bench and that’s the way it ended.
There’s a point of absurdity to all this. The Hall of Fame is just a museum. Up until now its doors have been closed to the all-time hits leader, the all-time homer leader, a pitcher with 354 wins and seven Cy Young Awards, and the only player in history to hit 60 homers in three different seasons.
Perhaps Bonds and Clemens will be elected by the Contemporary Era Committee this weekend, but it seems like a long shot. They’ve already been turned down 11 times, 10 by the BBWAA and the other by a different iteration of that same committee.
Since Rodriguez was unconditionally released by the Yankees he’s won Emmys for his work on FOX Sports and bought a part of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves. In essence, he has been approved by the NBA owners, but the writers won’t let him into Cooperstown.
Americans love second chances, and Rodriguez has earned his moment of redemption.
“I was the victim and I was just missing things, not seeing things vs. I screwed up, and they were just doing their jobs,” he said. “There was a cause and effect to my actions. Months and months and years later I started feeling, OK, I understand what exactly happened here. It’s on me. That was a long bridge to walk.”
He found out the hard way.