Tenorio: A-Rod’s meeting with G-men could have big implications for Sox

There are few people out there Red Sox fans can’t stand more than Alex Rodriguez. Maybe the guy who illegally passed them on 93 South ? maybe the weatherman who says it’ll be 20 degrees on Friday ? maybe the bicyclist whizzing past them on a street corner. But it’s a short list.The bad news is that if A-Rod lets his confidence propel him through this season, Red Sox Nation will have even more reason to loathe the Yankees third baseman. For he very well could power the Bronx Bombers to another American League pennant.Yahoo! Sports reported on Tuesday that luck may finally be on A-Rod’s side after 15 years without a World Series ring. Only his newfound good-luck charm isn’t a ring, it’s a different playoff memento, a blue bracelet of sorts.”It was faded something closer to royal, and scuffed, and stained, a little ripe,” reporter Tim Brown wrote. “Maybe it didn’t look the same as it once did, but there was something about resiliency in a bracelet that carried and witnessed a championship.”Before last season, A-Rod always had that second-place aura about him. His Mariners couldn’t beat the Yankees, and his Yankees couldn’t beat the Red Sox. Last year Fortuna’s wheel seemed to spin at its lowest. He admitted to using steroids and he battled a hip injury. As for the Yankees, they lost their first eight games against the Red Sox. To quote William Shakespeare, O, what a fall was there.Amazingly, A-Rod and the Yankees got back up, and the once star-crossed infielder helped his team win its first World Series since 2000 with .286/30-homer/100-RBI numbers in the regular season and .365/6-HR/18-RBI totals in the playoffs.Championship fever is contagious. Once you win one, you can’t wait to win another – as A-Rod told Yahoo! Sports. A playoff-hungry A-Rod could feast on American League pitching this season.There are obstacles that could delay the New Yorker’s meteoric rise toward another flag, however, and several of those obstacles have their home base on Yawkey Way. A-Rod has struggled against Boston pitching, and recent addition John Lackey has held him to a .176 average and struck him out the most times (23) for any hurler.The most imminent problem, though, may occur this week. On Friday, A-Rod will reportedly meet with FBI members to discuss a Toronto-based doctor, Anthony Galea, who has admitted to using human growth hormone – but denies supplying it to athletes.Why are the G-men interested in A-Rod? “Galea ? said he treated Rodriguez after the third baseman’s hip surgery last year and prescribed anti-inflammatories during his rehabilitation,” the New York Post reported.This meeting has “mixed signals” written all over it. On the one hand, from what the New York media are reporting, it looks like A-Rod has drawn the feds’ interest as a witness and not as a subject for an investigation. On the other hand, once he’s done speaking with the government, Major League Baseball wants to have a sit-down with him about this.Two weeks previous, A-Rod sounded calm, cool and collected when the media asked him about the not-so-good doctor.”I am at ease, no matter what,” he told The Post.Sox fans had better hope otherwise ? and that the guy who cut them off on 93 North, not the New York Yankees slugger, remains Public Enemy Number One on their list.Rich Tenorio is an Item sports copy editor.