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Alex Rodriguez' hearing on the appeal of his record 211-game suspension will begin Monday.

(William Perlman/The Star-Ledger)

The strange return of Alex Rodriguez to the ballfield became somehow less strange as the weeks went by, public scrutiny of him as a scandalous figure turning — at least for some — to sympathy for him as a sitting target, wrongly singled out by baseball as the most brazen cheater of his time.

Home runs and batting slumps became the thing. Had he used drugs to spike his performance? For Yankees fans, the question could wait in exchange for one more big hit, one spark that might propel them to new glories. At times, chaos and controversy faded.

Today, with the Yankees’ season tucked away, the melodrama resumes at 245 Park Ave., behind closed doors, in a conference room at the offices of Major League Baseball, a matter to be argued by teams of lawyers and ultimately decided by an arbitrator.

For the sport, it is nothing short of The Hearing of The Century, when the game’s most polarizing star has his chance to appeal a historic 211-game suspension that would keep him out of baseball well into 2015. At 38, his body breaking down, Rodriguez might be fighting for his baseball life.

The appeals process will wind through baseball’s cherished month of October, through the postseason, which begins tomorrow in Pittsburgh. The arbitrator, Fredric Horowitz, has 25 days from today to make a ruling. That would place his decision smack in the middle of the World Series, though the sides could agree to have it postponed in an effort to keep fans and commentators undistracted by the around-the-clock A-Rod news blitz that surely would ensue.

The hearing will play out like a trial — beginning today with a presentation of evidence by baseball, followed by witness testimony and cross-examinations, and leading, as the days go by, into the defense side of the case. Horowitz has blocked out the rest of this week for the hearing and has cleared several other days this month, if needed.

Gallantly, he is trying to control the rumpus. Last week — well before coffee and Danish are served today and before ties are loosened and tensions rise — Horowitz issued a gag order. Sniping, though, already has begun, with strategic lines clearly emerging.

Two people with knowledge of how the case will likely develop said baseball will argue that Rodriguez deserves unprecedented harsh treatment because he alone among a group of 13 players disciplined Aug. 5 flouted the rules against performance-enhancing drugs for several years and then tried to conceal his conduct. The other players were hit with 50-game suspensions, the mandated penalty for first-time offenders laid out in the sport’s Joint Drug Agreement between MLB and the Players Association.

Though Rodriguez has never tested positive for drug use, MLB — headed by its longtime executive vice president, Rob Manfred, and buttressed by lawyers from Proskauer Rose — will portray him as a repeat offender deserving a more severe penalty. The drug policy calls for a 100-game suspension for a second offense and a lifetime ban for a third.

The two sources, citing the sensitivity surrounding the hearing, requested anonymity.

A counteroffensive that would have seemed implausible a month ago then will take shape, they said: Alex Rodriguez as underdog.

Rodriguez’s lawyers will argue that in their client, MLB and commissioner Bud Selig have found a straw man for all the ills attached to the age of artificially boosted numbers.

They said that Rodriguez’s group, led by Joseph Tacopina and David Cornwell, will accuse baseball of heavy-handed tactics during its seven-month investigation into the flow of illicit drugs, including human growth hormones, from Biogenesis, a now-shuttered Florida lab, to the players.

Rodriguez’s representatives likely will draw parallels to their client Rodriguez and Ryan Braun, the Milwaukee Brewers’ star outfielder, who accepted a 65-game suspension in July, and with Melky Cabrera, suspended for 50 games last season after testing positive for raised levels of testosterone.

According to the sources, Rodriguez’s lawyers view Cabrera’s situation as especially relevant because Cabrera was not treated as a two-time offender, even though he was tied to a fake website concocted to make it appear he had naively purchased the drugs from the site.

Baseball officials, one of the sources said, regard those arguments as an elaborate attempt by Rodriguez to sidestep the issue of whether he used the taboo drugs in the first place.

Tacopina has said his client will not serve one inning of the suspension, but that may be more showmanship than a realistic expectation.

"What this is all about is proportionality of the penalty," said Jay Krupin, a prominent Washington labor lawyer who has represented many sports organizations and team owners. "When you have one of the most notable and marquee players, people will say that you shouldn’t be piggybacking a cover-up onto the use of PEDs."

The Yankees will not be represented at the hearing, but they certainly have a stake in the result. Should the suspension stand, they will be spared having to pay Rodriguez roughly $31 million.

Most recent Octobers, Rodriguez was occupied with the team’s hunt for another title. But there’s no pennant chase in the Bronx this year, and Rodriguez said Saturday he will join his phalanx of lawyers today. It is unclear whether he will testify at any point in the hearing, but surely, no baseball player has ever charted a season like the one just completed.

As winter turned to spring turned to summer, and as details of the investigation became public, and as he turned into the game’s pariah, he labored in Tampa, Fla., rehabbing from a second hip operation. He caromed between a public relations campaign and an ugly trading of accusations between him and his Yankee bosses, who he said were intent on keeping him off the field.

Just hours after Selig handed down the suspensions, Rodriguez joined the Yankees lineup for a game in Chicago, where he was fiercely booed. Two weeks later, he received the same treatment in Boston, culminating in Red Sox pitcher Ryan Dempster hitting him with a pitch.

The incident seemed to have flipped a switch. The jeering ebbed, and a contingent grew — at least among Yankees loyalists — that saw him less as villain and more as scapegoat. He started strong, then slumped as leg pains mounted. And 10 days ago, he surpassed Lou Gehrig as the man with the most grand slam homers in baseball history, and the Yankee Stadium crowed roared its approval.

Suspicions surrounding him produced equally complex feelings in baseball’s player ranks. Sam Fuld, a reserve player on the Tampa Bay Rays, said the other day that he and many of his teammates thought it unfair that Rodriguez was able to have an impact on the playoff race.

A teammate, Curtis Granderson, said he was amazed at Rodriguez’s capacity to focus on the game. He said that on the team’s last off day a week ago, Rodriguez had lunch with his daughter.

"Everyone forgets that he’s human, that he’s still a father and a friend," Granderson said.

Through it all, Rodriguez seemed to have endured the furor by disappearing into the game itself. A few days ago, beneath the Yankee Stadium stands, he laughed and hit baseballs off a tee, the sort Little Leaguers use, as if not a single trouble were lurking.