A-Rod Steroid Scandal

Michael Kurtenbach Public Relations Research Papare March 13, 2009 In order to fully understand the situation is important to look at A-Rod’s career. We will start by looking at what led to his fateful decision, how he damage controlled it, and the repercussions from it. After breaking several baseball records during his first two seasons with the Yankees and amassing an MVP title, Rodriguez became an All-Star once again while being 4thranked in RBI’s in 2006. In July of that year, he got his 450thhomerun, becoming the youngest player to pass such a milestone. And it was during the 2007 season that he beast his own record, surpassing the 500-home run mark. To cap off the 2007 season, he took home the Player’s Choice Award for Outstanding American league Player. Today he remains with the Yankee’s organization after signing a basic 10-year contract for 275 million dollars in November of 2007.3 Major League Baseball made an official statement after A-Rod’s results became public, saying “because the survey testing that took place in 2003 was intended to be non-disciplinary and anonymous, we cannot make any comment on the accuracy of this report as it pertains to the player named.” They basically said they weren’t going to act on the allegations because they were behind the players.1 Looking at Rodriguez’s public relations tactics, he took a similar approach as Johnson and Johnson did during the Tylenol Murders, coming right out and facing the problem and taking action. He did an interview on ESPN, where he admitted that he had used banned substances from 2001 to 2003. The main reason for using the substances was that he felt that he had an enormous amount of pressure to perform. He soon followed that up with “all my years in New York have been clean” as he stopped using them in 2003 spring training. In regards to ethics in business, A-Rod demonstrated that he did break a code of conduct established by major league baseball. He did state however that, “Back...