If A-Rod Could Have Been Honest . . .

He might have said something like:

"As you all know, I tested positive for steroids in 2003.

That's because I was using them.

I'm not going to say which ones I was using. And I'm not gonna say when I used them, where I used them or how I got them. I'm not trying to offer any steroid endorsements, and I'm not trying to incriminate myself or anybody else. As a league, we agreed to the 2003 testing not to get anybody prosecuted or suspended; the point was to see how widespread the steroid using was. We all have a better idea of the answer to that question now.

Yes, it was cheating. It was against the rules, and that's what cheating is. I was breaking the rules, and I knew it, so I have to own up to the label.

Why did I cheat? The same reason that hitters cork bats and pitchers doctor balls. It was to get an edge. I've heard some people say, 'He didn't need to break the rules to do well. He was doing well enough.' But nobody is doing 'well enough' in baseball. No hitter gets a home run in every at bat. Everybody wants to get better. If you're hitting .300, you want to hit .310. If you're hitting .340, you want to hit .375. I thought that using could make me better, and so I used. If I thought I could have gotten the same results by eating spinach like Popeye, I would have done that, too.

Yes, I lied about it. That's human nature. I was doing something that I knew was against the rules, and I didn't want to advertise that fact, so when I was asked about it, I lied. Once I'd lied, I lied more to cover up what I was doing and to hide the fact that I'd been lying about it. When you cheat and then lie, that's the cycle you lock yourself into.

Am I happy I was caught? Of course not. When you get caught in a situation like this, you do feel some sense of relief at not having to hide the truth any more. But if you thought you'd rather have that relief than keep up the facade, you'd come clean on your own. Obviously, I didn't do that.

Since I used on purpose and lied about it, it wouldn't make sense for me to sit here now and act like I really felt terrible about what I did. I knew I was cheating. I also knew that plenty of players in the history of baseball broke the rules to get an edge, and the battle between them trying to cheat and the folks trying to catch them was just a part of the competition to win. I knew that using steroids was more serious than throwing spitballs, because I knew there were laws against drug use. But I figured those laws were kind of like laws against using marijuana: on the books, but not really enforced. That was clearly the case in baseball at the time, because there wasn't any testing or punishment for juicing. Since then, the league has made it clear that it is going to take drug use seriously, and that steroids aren't just like stealing signals from the centerfield scoreboard. That's why I'm not using any performance enhancing drugs any more.

I know that some fans supported me personally or the game in general because they did not know the extent of the cheating and lying on my part or in the rest of the game. I'm sorry to those fans for being such a disappointment to you. Of course, I'm sorry to any current or former teammates who will now have to suffer the intrusion of questions about me, or feel the taint of guilt by association with me. If the edge I got by cheating was the difference between anybody staying in the majors or having to leave, I'm sincerely sorry to anybody in that category. And as for all the other players I've competed against, I know that if they want to think less of me as a man and a player because they know I've cheated, I have to accept that as a fair consequence of what I've done."