I have been a New York Yankees fan for my entire existence on this earth. I have gone from the highest of highs in the late nineties to eight years of playoff failure capped off with a miserable 2008 season. Many people forget about the terrible disappointment Yankee fans have had to endure in the new millennium, citing that the Yankees make the playoffs every year, they buy all the good players and they are simply an evil organization. I would rather have had the Yankees miss the playoffs entirely than lose the World Series to the Diamondbacks on a fluke single in 2001, and I would rather have seen the Yankees organization fold and be erased from all memory than watch the Red Sox come back to win the 2004 ALCS. As the Yankees shut down their stadium and move into a brand new home, it seems fitting that another spring training is marred with the actions of Alex Rodriguez.

In 2004, when the Yankees acquired the 28-year-old Alex Rodriguez from the Texas Rangers for second baseman Alfonso Soriano, I remember casually checking espn.com and seeing the trade. I proceeded to run around the house screaming for the next three hours. I had never been happier, and I certainly had reason to feel that way. A-Rod was the game’s biggest star, averaging over 50 home runs per year from 2001 to 2003 as a Ranger. He had swagger, a beautiful swing and a proven ability to hit American League pitching better than any other player. Not only that: I understood that he would be in his prime for the next five to eight years, and that I would be able to closely follow the career of a sure-fire first ballot hall of famer. I had a new favorite player.

Alex certainly put up the numbers that were expected of him, averaging about 40 home runs and well over 100 runs batted in each of his five seasons in a Yankee uniform. I recognized, along with every other human that follows baseball, that Rodriguez was a bona fide choke artist. He was a miserable ninth-inning hitter and would not make a single-A team based on his playoff performances. Joe Torre dropped A-Rod to 8th in the order during the 2006 playoffs because of his inability to do anything except strike out. Naturally, I defended A-Rod. A player with Alex’s skills — and by that I mean skills that go unparalleled in this universe — could not possibly play that poorly on a consistent basis.

I began regularly listening to ESPN 1050’s Max Kellerman and his biased New York radio broadcast. The show regularly masks A-Rod’s poor play with a laundry list of statistics and cliché sayings that point to him as a hall of fame player. Kellerman was often right — Alex, by the statistics, will go down as one of the best players to have ever played the game. With every playoff run, however, the same thing would happen. Rodriguez would simply be bad when it mattered most. The chants of “April-Rod” and “May-Rod” instantly became popular. As I watched my favorite player crumble, and each Yankee season washed away within a matter of a few October days, I fell into a deep state of denial. I refused to believe what I had witnessed. Watching A-Rod throughout the entire year was nothing less than exhilarating, but his lack of production and absence of leadership in the playoffs was a sickening thing for me.

Rodriguez’s recent admission of using performance-enhancing drugs is really something that I am also trying to avoid mentally. I think the truth is that I am so disappointed that he will not be remembered for his statistics but for being a lying cheater. I will always maintain that he is one of the best talents ever to grace the baseball diamond, but if I am asked if he is a role model, the clear answer is no. Here is a man that lied about steroid use, was accused of cheating on his wife and has set a poor example of how a man is supposed to handle himself. As an A-Rod fan, I have been let down by my favorite player. There is never going to be an opportunity for him to erase this — he is going to have to play the rest of his career with this misery hanging over his head. What is even more disappointing to me is that he was destined to break Hank Aaron’s record fairly and honestly, and the home run crown would return to where it belongs in New York.

I am left helpless as an A-Rod fan but optimistic as a Yankees fan. I know that the Yankees have paid for a number of absolute studs in C.C. Sabathia and Mark Teixiera, and I could not be more excited to see them in Yankee uniforms. I do find it very annoying that A-Rod is going to be picked on all year, and the Yankees are going to receive a great deal of grief over the situation. Every visiting team’s fans will be holding up asterisk signs, and the national baseball following is going to let A-Rod know that they’ve been cheated and that they are angry. One of the only notions that Yankee fans can use to defend themselves is that A-Rod has not touched a steroid in a Yankee uniform. Although he has cheated the game, I do feel as though it was independent of his career in New York. When the ticker tape parade comes down Broadway later this fall, I will hopefully be in the process of forgiving my favorite player and enjoying the new Yankees dynasty.