Where’s A-Rod? Cashman mum on Rodriguez workout locale to keep ‘paparazzi’ off trail

In trying to do Alex Rodriguez a favor, New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman might have intensified the media onslaught that often confronts his embattled third baseman.

Cashman said Monday he would keep the public out of the loop regarding A-Rod's workout schedule this spring. It has been reported Rodriguez will split time between Yankees camp in Tampa and New York City, probably Yankee Stadium, as he rehabs his surgically repaired hip. Cashman also thinks that by dividing the media, he'll be giving A-Rod cover from recent PED allegations.

The New York Post reports:

Mindful of the heat generated by the recent Miami New Times story alleging massive illegal performance-enhancing drug usage by Rodriguez, the Yankees will give the public no advance warning of their rehabilitating third baseman’s whereabouts.

“I’m not going to say to try and keep away the extra, whatever you want to call it, paparazzi, whatever it is, the stakeout, wherever he is working out,” general manager Brian Cashman said last night at the Hard Rock Café in Manhattan, where the Yankees held a fundraiser for WCBS-AM radio producer-engineer Carlos Silva, who is battling cancer. “That’s the only reason I’m not going to say where he is going to be on a given day.”

But that'll only make the tabloids foam at the mouth even more. It's already happening. Another newspaper, the New York Daily News, claims to have sources that claim A-Rod is "scared" the Yankees and Major League Baseball are behind the Biogenesis allegations as part of a scheme to "push him out of the game" — presumably — so they don't have to pay him the the $114 million that's left on his contract. Sounds ludicrous, sure, but you know what they say about being paranoid: It doesn't necessarily mean someone isn't out to get you.

Cashman goes on to say that the Yankees have handled distractions before and why would this season be any different? He's at least half-right, but it also sounds like wishful thinking. What the Miami New Times and ESPN have uncovered might be nothing. Maybe any forthcoming investigations by the government or MLB yield zero real evidence that would get A-Rod in real trouble. But the media isn't treating it like nothing. A-Rod's already guilty, seemingly, in most people's minds. And the press is going to keep digging until it (we, them, whatever) either find something or get tired of digging.

By hiding A-Rod, Cashman makes it look like he's got something to hide.

Pitchers and catchers report any moment.
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