No one believes A-Fraud

Nobody in their right mind believes admitted PEDphile Alex Rodriguez.

He's lied. He's cheated. No one believes him.

Not even in Chicago, where Cubs fans believed the likes of Andy MacPhail, Ed Lynch and Dusty Baker would deliver championships. Bulls fans trusted Jerry Krause and John Paxson to rebuild disaster basketball squads. And don't even get me started on the Bears or Blackhawks' previous short-comings on their respective promises of championships.

So here we have a city that embraced former rivals and evil-doers. Dennis Rodman, Jim Edmonds and Bob Probert were once revered by Bulls, Cubs and Blackhawks fans, respectively. Rodman and Edmonds eventually became beloved figures during championship runs.

I'm still waiting for Probert to get out of rehab.

And that brings us to A-Roid and the Chicago columnists that aren't cutting him any slack.

Rick Telander [Chicago Sun-Times]: "Would you let a half-witted ''cousin'' clandestinely shoot you up with unnamed drugs in an unsanitary fashion dozens of times over a three-year period when you're getting paid $25 million a year to do what you already have done and this seeming moron might be killing you?"

So how long until someone finds A-Rod's cousin? Weeks? Months? Days? My money's on either the New York Times and its staff of brilliant investigative journalists or ESPN who has the pure man-power and seemingly endless funds to find this character.

Maybe the better question is how long until the New York Post or Daily News finds out that A-Rod's cousin doesn't exist?

Rick Morrisey [Chicago Tribune]: "Unfortunately, being young and stupid (more about the validity of that characterization later) doesn't absolve one of bad behavior. It's why, no matter how sincere he was in apologizing for his past mistakes, Rodriguez shouldn't get to sit in the big-boy wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame."

I'm a 22-year-old college kid, and I know young and stupid.

So maybe there is a reason I realized when A-Rod said he was young and stupid, he was in his eighth, ninth and tenth(!) seasons in Major League Baseball. He was a major league veteran. MLB vets don't make "young and stupid" mistakes.

You know who makes "young and stupid" mistakes 18-to-24-year-olds who have finally broken away from mommy and daddy's loving grasp while on their first (and sometimes only) semester at college.

And while this might be Rodriguez's truth presented by a highly-paid group of Ivy League-educated attorneys, I'm going to ask of him to really come clean.

Just say that you took the steroids because everyone else who was doing it benefited mightily and you didn't want to be left in the dust.