Condoning a Cheater

I just want to start this post out by saying that even though I'm an enormous Red Sox fan, this particular post has nothing to do with the rivalry, but everything to do with what I think is wrong.

Since I've started working out at a gym with TVs more often, I've been watching a lot more ESPN than I normally do.  I'm not an avid ESPN watcher, I don't NEED to watch it, but I won't change the channel if it's on.  Unless I'm running then I need something distracting.  ANYWAYS.  I've been keeping up (and by keeping up, I mean that I know what's going on) with the Alex Rodriguez scandal.  Now, I HATE Alex Rodriguez.  I've hated him since the 2004 American League Championship Series when he SMACKED (not pushed, not swerved to avoid, but SWATTED like a little girl) Bronson Arroyo's glove when he went to tag him on the way to first base.  I mean seriously, who does that?  "Oh don't tag me, I'm gonna stop you, WHACK."  And the umps made a great call there, because he blatantly cheated.  His face was completely like "I didn't do anything!" when hello, you swung your arm up and slapped the ball out of his glove.  It is EXACTLY the kind of face he makes now when doing interviews.  "I didn't take performance enhancing drugs and then convince other players to come take them from this same company then rat them out to the MLB. Why am I being punished?  I just want to play baseball."  It makes me utterly sick whenever they show his interviews on ESPN.  But of course they have to, because it's major baseball news. So A-Rod is a douchebag.

Yesterday, during the Red Sox/Yankees game, Ryan Dempster plugged Alex Rodriguez in the elbow in the 2nd inning.  He, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, John Farrell and the umpire all said it was an accident, but Joe Girardi thought otherwise, saying that Demps plunked him on purpose as a show of disapproval of A-Rod's actions.  He got thrown out for arguing about it, even though it wasn't like he nailed him in the head, or in the back or anywhere like that.  The elbow is a perfectly legitimate place to get nailed accidently, because it's in the fucking strike zone.  So then, fucking A-Rod hits a homerun in the 6th inning.  And you know what the coverage did?  The announcers went quiet, and the camera just followed him all around the bases, into the dugout, watched him take his batting helmet and gloves off, walked the length of the dugout and get settled on the bench, all without a single word, or a glimmer of recognition that the game was continuing.  And I got to thinking.  This man is a BLATANT cheater, not once but MULTIPLE times.  He is currently under appeal for a 211 game suspension, which would keep him out of baseball through the 2014 season.  Why on earth are we still celebrating him?  Why are we showing his disgustingly smug slimy face all throughout baseball?  And why when someone hits him (which let's face it, I'm sure many of us would want to do) are we sticking up for him?  I'm not saying he deserves to be hurt (though I really wouldn't mind kicking him in the balls), but why are we condoning him?  By condoning the man, we're saying that despite the 13 player suspension the commissioner of baseball handed out (50 games, one of the biggest mass suspensions in history, and the most spread out since the Black Sox scandal), it's totally fine that he's a ginormous cheater and still continues to play.  The Yankees need to cut him and nobody else needs to pick him up.  Shut him out of baseball once and for all.  Because for me, he ruins the game, and I HATE when people ruin the things I love.