Remember back in the spring how Alex Rodriguez said that it was his cousin, Yuri Sucart, who was the one that supplied him with his PEDs? Well, he’s had a worse go of it since then than A-Rod has:
Banks
began foreclosure proceedings on Yuri Sucart’s Miami home and three
South Florida rental properties in the months after Rodriguez’s Feb. 17
news conference . . . US Bank initiated foreclosure proceedings on
Sucart’s two-bedroom home on Aug. 12 . . . Deutsche Bank
began foreclosure proceedings on April 3 on a four-bedroom apartment
Sucart purchased in February of 2005. Wachovia Mortgage initiated
foreclosure proceedings against two other rental properties owned by
Sucart and his wife in July.
The Daily News article does
its best to paint A-Rod as responsible for all of this, essentially
saying that he treated Sucart like a drug mule and then cast him aside
when the drug revelations hit. That whole narrative is broken,
however, by a quote buried sixteen paragraphs into the story: “A friend
of A-Rod’s who spoke on condition of anonymity says Sucart
still works for the Yankee superstar. ‘Alex takes care of his family,’
the friend says.”
It’s entirely possible that, like any other number of property owners
who are upside down on their mortgage in depressed markets like South
Florida, Sucart and/or Rodriguez made the judgment that it’s preferable to simply walk away and let the bank have property that is worth way less than its outstanding indebtedness rather than continue to throw good money after bad.
Such a strategy comes with its own set of moral and ethical issues, of course, but
it’s something that’s done all the time, and is even counseled by a lot
of legitimate financial advisers under such circumstances.
Moreover, such a strategy fits into the “Alex takes care of his family” narrative
in ways that the “A-Rod is a heartless man who threw his cousin under
the bus” does not. But since the Daily News has spent the past several
years demonizing every PED-connected player in baseball, there’s no way
that they’d ever take that angle.
