A-Rod might want to thank Ramirez

When Alex Rodriguez arrives at Baltimore’s Camden Yards today with the New York Yankees, maybe he can explain to us what would possess fellow superstar Manny Ramirez to ingest a substance questionable enough to cost him 50 games and nearly a third of his $25-million salary.

A-Rod should know, because he recently admitted to years of steroid abuse while he was making $25 million per season with the Texas Rangers. Ramirez isn’t admitting to more than bad judgment for taking a nonsteroidal substance he claims was prescribed by a doctor in Miami to treat a legitimate medical problem. But it’s fair to wonder how the two highest-paid players in the history of professional baseball find themselves at the same chemical crossroads at approximately the same time.

Fortunately, A-Rod is just passing through, so Orioles fans can voice any residual steroid-related resentment at him from the stands. The last time the Yankees were at Baltimore, Mark Teixeira was the target of the fans’ wrath, though for entirely different reasons. In fact, there were people in the Yankees’ traveling party who said they felt that Teixeira was booed so heavily during the opening series of the regular season in part because Rodriguez was not there to take his share of the anti-Yankees abuse.

Don’t know whether Tex will get a break this weekend, but Rodriguez isn’t likely to get any slack on any of the Yankees’ road stops for the foreseeable future. The report of his positive steroid test in 2003 was a bombshell similar to Thursday’s news about Ramirez, and his subsequent admission to three years of steroid use in Texas didn’t pass the smell test for a growing legion of A-Rod skeptics. Now, his tarnished image is taking another big hit with the release of “A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez” by Sports Illustrated reporter Selena Roberts.

Roberts, who broke the news that Rodriguez had tested positive for steroids during Major League Baseball’s steroid survey testing in 2003, implies in the book that A-Rod might have taken steroids as early as high school and quotes an unidentified player alleging that Rodriguez tipped opposing hitters to pitches in the hope of getting the same courtesy when he came to the plate.

Rodriguez has been on the disabled list -- and largely out of the public eye -- since undergoing hip surgery soon after the steroid scandal broke. He has been working his way back into shape at the Yankees’ training facility in Tampa, Fla., and reportedly is ready to rejoin the team for the weekend series against the Orioles. He isn’t expected to shed light on anything other than his on-field performance, though he has to be thrilled that another big star has come under the media microscope at the same time he’s moving back into the national spotlight.

Ramirez, meanwhile, remains in his own little world. He has always kept largely to himself and usually seems oblivious to the hoopla going on around him. That doesn’t figure to change after this strange episode, which already has taken strange turns.

A-Rod has made the most far-reaching admission of guilt of any of the high-profile offenders other than Jose Canseco, and yet he’s being cast as a greater villain than any of them.

Guess he’ll find out soon whether the American public is as forgiving as advertised.

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pschmuck@baltsun.com