A Rod snapped out of his modest home run drought (29 at bats) to become the youngest player to ever hit 500 home runs today. He's the 22nd player to reach the milestone and the second this season.

Last week Jose Canseco mentioned in an interview that Rodriguez is "not who he appears to be." While he did not make an outright claim of Rodriguez using steroids he did say to "wait and see" and that there would definitely be something about Rodriguez in his upcoming book.

Rodriguez has mostly escaped the steroids witch hunt that has plagued baseball in general and other sluggers such as Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, and Jason Giambi specifically.

Some have said that Rodriguez doesn't seem like he's taken steroids because he's not as big as other sluggers. This point is easily refuted because many of the players who have actually tested positive have not been particularly "huge," many of them have been weak hitting players and pitchers. In fact a majority of the players who have tested positive have been pitchers.

Others have said that since Rodriguez has been so good his whole MLB career (which started when he was just 19 years old) there's no reason to believe he took steroids to get better. This is also easily refuted. For one, Canseco has admitted to taking steroids his entire career, so there's a precedent of players doing so. For another, by the time Rodriguez started his career in 1994 there's reason to believe that steroid use was already widespread. Thus it is possible that Rodriguez has used steroids throughout his career.

Certainly I am not claiming that Rodriguez has used steroids, merely that you cannot deny the possibility based on circumstantial facts. It would not surprise me at all if Rodriguez has dabbled in chemistry.

---

The first player to reach 500 this year was Frank Thomas who hit 2 more homers today to raise his career total to 505.

Labels: Alex Rodriguez