The Yankees Don't Use Spring Training To Get Ready For Baseball Anymore.

They use it to stage photo-ops and press conferences so their stars can try to scrub the tarnish off their images. 

From ESPN: 

Alex Rodriguez will have a thick pinstriped wall of New York Yankees looking on during his news conference Tuesday, with teammates coalescing around A-Rod following his admission that he used banned drugs.

The Yankees still didn't know how many specifics of his drug use Rodriguez planned to divulge when he speaks in the tent behind the third-base stands at Steinbrenner Field.

While Andy Pettitte spoke from the heart during his news conference a year ago admitting use of human growth hormone, the image-conscious Rodriguez appears to be formulating his strategy surrounded by an entourage large enough to fill a television series.

Even before Sports Illustrated reported on its Web site Feb. 7 that Rodriguez tested positive for a pair of steroids during baseball's anonymous survey in 2003, Team A-Rod included agent Scott Boras and his staff, manager Guy Oseary and the William Morris Agency.

He has retained James E. Sharp, a lawyer who represented Pettitte and Sammy Sosa before Congress and then-President George W. Bush in front of a federal prosecutor. Rodriguez also brought in Outside Eyes, a media strategy and crisis management company based in Newport Beach, Calif., that includes communications specialists from Republican campaigns.

There are at least 27 current and former players with ties to both the Yankees and to steroids and/or HGH.  

I remember when Billy Martin owned the back pages of New York's tabloids because he liked to drink and fight. Seems kind of innocent now, doesn't it? 

I'm a Yankee fan, and it gets weirder every year. I'll watch this image-is-everything empty vessel and his yes-men try to sell his story Tuesday.  His admission to using a "banned substance" didn't surprise me; A-Rod coming clean at his press conference and coming through in the clutch in the playoffs would.