“I don’t ever want to ruin a guy’s career,” he said. “That would break my heart.”

Rodriguez insisted he had “an amazing relationship” with Girardi, but he would not characterize his thoughts on the team president, Randy Levine.

Essentially, though, Rodriguez is asserting fraud by the front office, saying that if you bought tickets to the American League Championship Series games against Detroit at Yankee Stadium, the ones in which he went 1 for 8 with three strikeouts, the Yankees were stealing your money. Because you would have attended the games on the assumption that the Yankees were trying to reach the World Series — when the Yankees, according to Rodriguez, had an evil plot that prioritized getting rid of him over winning a 28th championship.

“They did things and acted in a way that is downright terrifying,” Tacopina said, referring to the Yankees.

It has been said that Rodriguez is so unsure of himself, so preoccupied with his own image that he continually acts as if he is trying to play himself in a movie. His new screenplay sounds like a mob thriller.

Consider what Rodriguez is charging: that when Rodriguez finally had surgery, Levine told the surgeon, Dr. Bryan T. Kelly, “I don’t ever want to see him on the field again.”

Levine denied Tacopina’s allegations.

Rodriguez, at least, had the conviction to let Tacopina speak on the record, and not hide behind an unidentified member of his nebulous “camp”. That underscores how strongly Rodriguez believes he has been victimized, even though he has not denied using performance-enhancing drugs again.

The irresistible pull of banned drugs is the root of all this, of course. We know that Rodriguez was too weak mentally to stay away from the stuff in the early 2000s. He admitted his prior use in 2009 and asked for a second chance. Then he earned himself a 211-game suspension for his ties to a shady clinic in Florida.