For the second time this year, Alex Rodriguez has jabbed a knife through my childhood.

Even if he is the self-centered, cocky, steroid-using symbol of all that is wrong with professional sports he still had one redeeming trait. The belief that his statistics, including his near-MVP 1996 season and 40-40 1998 season, with my beloved Seattle Mariners were authentic.

According to Sports Illustrated’s Selena Roberts, who broke the story of A-Rod’s failed steroid test in February and released her book on May 4, A-Rod used steroids in high school. Between his sophomore and junior high school baseball seasons his bench press allegedly increased from 100 pounds to 310, or by the equivalent of more than two Shawn Johnsons.

My friend Dan Agnew has been crying to himself since graduation about the loss of baseball’s integrity from the book’s charge that A-Rod tipped off pitches to opposing players in blowout games. His morals are misguided.

Players tipping off pitches is dinosaur-old as is subtle forms of cheating in all sports. The only exception may be curling, though some of those brooms may have secret windshield wipers to further reduce the friction on the ice.

A-Rod’s high school steroid use is an abomination.

It tells us that A-Rod was not pulled into steroids from a desire to compete with MLB-level players, but by an innate immature sense of individualistic selfishness.

It tells us that A-Rod’s disrespect for our national past times’ history began before the game had even given him a reason for cockiness – a disrespect that went unseen by great mentors such as Edgar Martinez and Lou Pinella who commended him for his work ethic and mature demeanor.

It even suggests that steroids may have been already rampant in high school sports as early as the 1990s – when only Jose Canseco was known to be juicing – hence potentially erasing a generation’s worth of records and baseball legitimacy.

On February 9, A-Rod told ESPN’s Peter Gammons that his only time using steroids was during his stint with the Texas Rangers from 2001 to 2003.

According to Roberts, A-Rod not only used steroids in high school but with the New York Yankees during the 2004-05 season, corroborated by an anonymous source telling the Sports Illustrated reporter that he saw A-Rod trading human growth hormone with Kevin Brown – who was named in the Mitchell Report – in 2004 and nicknames for A-Rod regarding steroids by teammates on the 2005 squad.

How are we supposed to believe anything A-Rod says anymore?

My respect for A-Rod’s artistic talents are now on par with the directors of Battlefield Earth. I also have more respect for AIG and Dick Cheney.

A-Rod is now as authentic as Michael Jackson. And while Jackson’s musical career has fizzled out, we unfortunately have nine more years of watching A-Rod belt home runs in Yankee pinstripes.