TAMPA, Fla. — Not for the first time in his career, Alex Rodriguez spent part of his first day of spring training fielding questions from reporters about his use of performance-enhancing drugs.

The last time was in February 2009, at a formal news conference at the Yankees’ complex, with scores of news media members on hand and teammates like Derek Jeter there to support him.

On Monday, six years later, Rodriguez faced the reporters alone. Dressed in a green University of Miami warm-up suit, he leaned casually against a fence on a sidewalk next to the team’s minor league complex as people in passing cars gawked at the spectacle.

Rodriguez, making his first unscripted comments to a group of reporters since he began serving a season-long suspension last April, said that nothing he had done could be justified or explained and that he recognized the morass he had put himself in.