Alex Rodriguez announced his retirement this week, leading some to wonder about his lasting legacy.

Rodriguez Enters Final Season

A-Rod arrived at Yankees camp three days early, but he still couldn't catch a break. Not from New York's front office, who did everything but install neutralizers in Yankee Stadium seats when he notched his 3,000th hit last June. Not from two dozen unsuspecting reporters at the team's Tampa minor league complex when A-Rod parked his SUV. Some even thought the color of his ride was newsworthy. It was white, by the way.

And certainly not from the Ringling brothers-like media ritually covering the third-most valuable team in sports, some who were mere yards away at George Steinbrenner Field. And for that, Rodriguez is to blame.

"He learned nothing," said a baseball executive. "He's the same old guy. He just did what he wanted to."

Without a steroid controversy or major injury hindering Rodriguez entering spring training, there needed to be a reason to hate one of sport's more reviled athletes. A-Rod is baseball's pariah, not quite on the level of a Ray Rice or Johnny Manziel, but anathema nonetheless. He's the player fans love to hate, even if that hate doesn't have a single defining moment.

So it didn't come as a surprise that Rodriguez announced his impending retirement this week. He's ready for a plaque in Monument Park and to shed the blue and white pinstripes for good once the season ends. It's time for a new face to define the Yankees.

After the 2017 season, that is, when his $275 million contract expires.

"I won't play after next year," Rodriguez told reporters on Wednesday. "I've really enjoyed my time. For me, it is time for me to go home and be Dad."

A Tainted Legacy

On Dec. 11, 2000, Rodriguez created a financial chasm within the Texas Rangers. Ken Griffey Jr.'s heir apparent left Seattle for a $252 million deal over 10 years, worth twice as much as sport's next biggest deal at the time, Kevin Garnett's $126 million contract.

It was an auspicious contract, higher on incentives than assurances. A-Rod would be Texas' hosanna, the Leonidas of a team that played like anything but Spartans. They folded year after year during his three-year stint, finally shipping him to New York for cap relief in 2004, though they still had to pay portions of his contact.

They still have to pay the man through 2025, well after his knees or hip have given out.

A-Rod on PEDs

What irks Rangers fans isn't that A-Rod didn't bring a title to Arlington or that "Yankees" is sprawled across his chest on game days. It's that no one will ever know how much of the $252 million he earned came from performance-enhancing drugs.

"Back then, [baseball] was a different culture," Rodriguez told ESPN in 2009, admitting to PED use while in Texas. "It was very loose. I was young. I was stupid. I was naïve. And I wanted to prove to everyone that it as worth being one of the greatest players of all time."

He added, "I did take a banned substance. And for that, I am very sorry and deeply regretful."

And this is where the story should have ended. Americans are forgiving, especially for a beloved athlete with as many endorsements as supermodels by his side. He could have come clean then and there, seven years ago, well before faux doctor Tony Bosch and anti-aging clinic Biogenesis became synonymous with his PED use.

In 2014, Bosch plead guilty to conspiracy to distribute anabolic steroids, confessing that he supplied dozens of Major Leagues - and possibly high school-aged athletes - with banned substances. For falsifying his medical record and accepting thousands of dollars for steroids injections, Bosch received a four-year prison term.

Rodriguez adamantly denied rumors of his involvement until the day Bosch and Major League Baseball struck an accord. When MLB suspended the Yankees' third baseman for 211 games, later reduced to all 162 games in 2014, he criticized the decision for its basis on "wholly unreliable testimony" from Bosch.

"The deck has been stacked against me from day one," Rodriguez said in a statement. "This is one man's [arbitrator Fredric Horowitz] decision, that was not put before a fair and impartial jury, does not involve me having failed a single drug test, is at odds with the facts and is inconsistent with terms of the Joint Drug Agreement and the Basic Agreement."

Stats vs. Stories

Asked if he imagines farewell tours a la Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, Rodriguez said, "Hopefully it is just low-key."

Low-key doesn't work in New York. Low-key doesn't even work in the Bronx, where a subtle wink of an eye becomes tabloid fodder. The only low-key part of A-Rod's next two seasons will be his 28th home run, when the Yankees celebrate his passing Babe Ruth on the all-time home run list with all the enthusiasm -- and timeliness -- of his 3,000th hit.

Rodriguez has been a headache for New York. He serves as an ode to the game's past at his best and a cautionary tale of what a laisse faire lifestyle off the field can do. For purists, the most frustrating thing about this is that he should be one of the all-time greats with a justified place next to the Gehrigs and Mantles and Berras of Yankees lore.

Everything on the back of his baseball card indicates A-Rod should be honored forever. But it doesn't mention the lies and unsportsmanlike conduct that may truly define his legacy.

All of this will matter when the Baseball Writers Association of America, seven years from now, debates Rodriguez's hall of fame eligibility. They'll weigh dexterity against vanity. They'll consider 600 homers against "the slap." They'll measure three Most Valuable Player awards against "the apology." They'll recall a 55.4 lifetime WAR as well as the "Stray Rod" scandal, when Rodriguez reportedly left a Toronto strip club hours before starting a three-game series in Boston, leading Red Sox fans to strap on blond bangs every time he reached the batter's box.

A Sliver of Hope for Cooperstown

A-Rod's hall of fame case isn't just a matter of timing. It's reliant on how much the BBWAA remembers about baseball's steroid era.

It's an uphill climb, littered with dreamers who will never make it to Cooperstown, some never directly linked to PEDs. For every Sammy Sosa or Roger Clemens there is a Jeff Bagwell and David Ortiz, legends and victims in their own right.

Former Yankees catcher Jorge Posada is among the majority. A teammate of Rodriguez's on the 2009 World Series championship, Posada believes the hall of fame belongs to players who "played the game clean."

"I don't think it's fair. I really don't," Posada said. "I think the guys that need to be in the Hall of Fame need to be players that played with no controversy."

Rodriguez dated Madonna, Cameron Diaz and Kate Hudson, among countless other women. Yet his one and only love may be the man in the mirror. Controversy isn't new to the Yankee clubhouse. Ask Jeter about his flings.

But Posada was referring to the controversy around illicit use human growth hormones. Few would contest that baseball had a problem, but how long the problem lasted isn't known. St. Louis Cardinals hall of famer Lou Brock, for one, hasn't completely written Rodriguez off.

Brock said he was "amazed at the fact that, in spite of that, he's still got the [competitive] eye. He's still got the will to play."

Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire are seldom mentioned without the term "steroids," yet they're Major League hitting coaches now, one with Miami and the other with the Dodgers. They offer redemption stories amid vehement refusals of hall of fame consideration.

But opinion may change in the next 10 to 15 years. The BBWAA softened its stance for Pete Rose's induction, and public opinion gradually sided with Rose in his 30-year fight with MLB, up until Rose admitted to continued betting on professional sports.

It's up to Rodriguez to keep on the straight and narrow, to begin his adieu by staying out of the limelight. His spring training entrance was a good start. It was low-key, just like the farewell tour he prophesied.

Well, it was low-key until he clarified his retirement intentions.

"I'm thinking in terms of my contract, which ends in 2017. After that, we'll see what happens," Rodriguez said. "I've got two more years and more than 300 games to play."

Look at this as two more years for Rodriguez to prove himself. His hall of fame application can use it.