Admittedly, I’ve never been a public figure.  I haven’t had the good fortune to be a professional athlete either.  And I’ve certainly never had a specialty strength trainer to enhance my personal steroids regime.  Still, there are aspects of this relationship that confuse me in ways I think they shouldn’t.

For starters, if you have some highly illegal, super scandalous, unfit for public consumption steroids trainer on your payroll, don’t you make some sort of effort to keep your relationship and maybe even his existence totally top secret?  I mean, sure, maybe during the “loosey-goosey” days, it was less of an issue.  He could roll with your crew, no questions asked.  Because, well, “loosey-goosey” days are “loosey-goosey” by definition.

And, hell, let’s just say that if you ever set foot inside a GNC c. 1999, you’ve seen some things.

But what about later?  Once the whole steroid thing became more of a taboo.  After they had actually started testing-or even seriously discussing the possibility of testing-for performance enhancing drugs. At that point, did it really still make sense to roll out your steroids peddler at special black tie events?  To do sleepovers with him on road trips?  To make him in any way a part of your public life or inner circle?

I can’t quite tell what that is-hubris or just plain old stupidity.  Or maybe they just need to build an extension on the lake house to accommodate all of its residents.

At this point, all we can say for sure about Angel Presinal, the character most recently introduced in the tragic-comedy otherwise known as A-Roid’s life, is that he’s not to be trusted.  How do we know this?  The guy’s been banned from the Texas Rangers clubhouse.  And they’re one step away from running an ex-con reformation and rehabilitation program in there.

Other reasons to give us pause are his link to an unmarked bag of steroids at the Toronto airport in 2001, his freakishly large and disproportionate muscles accompanies with the mysterious absence of a neck, and rumors that he’s referred to as “The Cleaner”-which is less about some kind of OCD-like interest in tidying than it is about the fact that he’s the guy who supposedly knows how to cover up a positive pee test.

Everybody’s got a skill, I guess.

Presinal appears to have had a relationship with just about every major Dominican player to have ever graced the field in recent years, and all of them have been his staunchest defenders.  David Ortiz, who claims never to have received or discussed steroids with Presinal, is among his backers.  I don’t presume to know whether or not Ortiz has always played clean, notwithstanding the hard line he recently took against steroids.  However, even assuming the best about Papi, I find it hard to believe that he was totally oblivious of the nature of Presinal’s operation.

(Though, Papi is the guy who said, “My name is Big Papi.  Because everyone calls me Papi.  And I’m big.” So anything’s possible.)

I know we’re all sick of talking about this, but the unwavering defense of Presinal even in the face of all this public scrutiny concerns me.  This is a guy who is well-known for ingratiating himself with young Dominican kids who want to make good.  In most cases, impressionable kids with limited resources.  I would suggest to these veteran players that they can do one of two things at this point: Invest the energy into protecting the future of their country’s more valuable asset-it’s young ballplayers-or go out on a limb to protect Angel Presinal and his asset.

If you ask me, I’d say that guy’s eaten more than his fair share of free lobster already.