A-Rod, listen close, if you want your baseball career to end with the ultimate honor, you need to stop the cheating

Come on A-Rod, for once you’re on everyone’s good side. We’re ignoring the year-long ban from baseball for performance enhancing drugs and not raising any stink about you bringing that stain to America’s pastime when we turn on ESPN and Fox baseball broadcasts. J.Rod was cool while it lasted. We were rooting for you!

But Alex Rodriguez got his hand caught in the cookie jar again, this time in the NBA. He, and his business partner Marc Lore, purchased the Minnesota Timberwolves earlier this year. Rodriguez then hosted the organization at his Miami home in September. It appears to be some type of team bonding thing, but with one issue: the players worked out at his house. The players lifted weights and practiced basketball there.

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported this is a violation of NBA rules and the Timberwolves were fined $250,000. Wojnarowski tweeted that this was not a secret as the Timberwolves posted the trip all over social media. They very much did.

According to the rules, the players can organize off-site workouts, but management is not permitted. Take a look at the person in the photo three people from the left. That is Rodriguez and the photo is tagged Miami, Florida. Even if Rodriguez wasn’t in the photo, that does not look to be a players-only gathering.

Obviously this isn’t the Biogenesis scandal that resulted in Rodgriguez’s 2013 full season suspension along with punishments for Ryan Braun and other MLB players. There was also Rodriguez being less than 100 percent honest in an interview, years prior to this scandal, where he admitted to performance enhancing drug use only from 2001-2003. This all happened during a time when Americans harbored a much more puritanical view toward PEDs. Rodgriguez’s current involvement in baseball is a display of how much the times have, in this writer’s opinion rightfully, changed.

However, A-Rod, you of all people need to be aware of, and follow, every single rule. You have to be fresh out of the shower clean at least until the final decision is made on your admission to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The next class is your first year of eligibility. If you don’t want to end up like Barry Bonds and be one of the undisputed greatest athletes to ever sweat and have your Hall of Fame status in doubt in your last year of eligibility, then you need to drive 55 miles per hour on the highway, and stop for a full second at stop signs. Leave no doubt, because the people who are doubting your worthiness to be admitted into the final stage of your baseball life are watching.