A-ROD AND BUDZILLA: THE FIXITY IS IN...

No one should be surprised by the timing of MLB's release of arbitrator Fredric Horowitz' decision in the A-Rod witchhunt:

--After a Hall of Fame vote that restored a certain level of "normalcy" for that embattled process;

--On the weekend, when the full force of the media cycle would be necessarily muted.

We knew that would be the case, since we still have Superfly Buzzy™ on duty; from what we could glean from his many carefully choreographed interventions (along with the up-and-coming new style of "oblique hacking" that will soon make Julian Assange and Edward Snowden look like blushing Boy Scouts...) the plan had been in place even before Horowitz tipped his hand, when bullet-proof car salesman turned MLB poo-poo bah Bud Selig was allowed to skate instead of play hopscotch.

And Buzzy also noted that several of Budzilla's "thug squad" (since Bud doesn't appear to have the chutzpah to man the phones in his "hail fellow well-met" arm-twisting chicanery of years past) had already crafted the "fib line" for the media to follow:

"MLB arbitrator reduces A-Rod's sentence to 162 games."

For any of you who may still be spitting out watermelon seeds in the back of the truck, this is nothing more than bait-and-switchery at its most consummately condescending. The plan was always to force A-Rod off the field in 2014. And it took the full-throttle shillery of the arbitrator to toss out all of the unsavory (and quite possibly criminal) activity of MLB so that it could enforce its ruling.

With enough media lapdogs on board (we've considered sending Tyler Kepner a poster-sized image of Roy Cohn so he can see where his true calling lies...) the skullduggery that has increasingly come into play in the escalating "steroid revenge hysteria" can be kept from public view.

By focusing on A-Rod as something akin to an "enemy of the state," a great deal of tainting (if not outright poisoning) of the legal zeitgeist can be achieved, thus shrinking the odds that any kind of legal remedy on A-Rod's behalf can even get off the ground. (Mike O'Keefe at the New York Daily News is already on the job, shamelessly shilling for Horowitz.)

The best outcome of this incredibly tawdry effort on the part of Budzilla and his trained seals in suits would be if A-Rod got an injunction permitting him to play in 2014 pending a full trial, with Budzi-poo forced to testify in open court right smack in the middle of his (Bud's) last post-season. At which point he'll have to find the right seal to fall on his suit to take the rap for the illegal efforts (up to and including the purchase of falsified testimony--you know...perjury!!) in order not to wind up with a scandal that could keep that placard with his craggy mug from being forcibly put on display in Cooperstown.

Now, it's true...A-Rod has had way too many g-friends
who've looked just like this...if these are the ones who
"dig the long ball," then bunting might well be the best strategy.

We aren't holding our breath for such a scenario, of course, and neither should you. While A-Rod is no saint, he's about six rungs down on the Anti-Christ Ladder™ than Budzilla, a man who deserves to be suspended for the rest of recorded time.

In this crazy-quilt world of "do as I say, not do as I do," the "tragedy then farce" progression is all too common; in that light, we need to guard against a fatal dose of cynicism by remembering to root out the type of capitalist who graduates to fascism whenever the chips are down. The pattern in Bud Selig's carpet has revealed a design that is, incredibly, uglier than his own face. That such could actually be the case, in a world where life imitates art and man bites dog, is something that should give all of us pause.