Why not root for Yankees' Alex Rodriguez?

March is here, and it is time to do something that might not feel natural to you.

It is time to join the Alex Rodriguez bandwagon.

The reasons why might differ from person to person, with various perspectives leading you to do so for various reasons. But there's no reasonable response to Rodriguez's return to the New York Yankees other than cheering.

Let's get this out of the way up top. Clearly, Rodriguez has made massive errors in judgment. He has acknowledged taking performance-enhancing drugs on multiple occasions.

But let's not pretend the level of scrutiny Rodriguez faced, complete with the massively expensive and questionably ethical investigation by Major League Baseball, was anywhere commensurate with what other players have faced. Rodriguez thought he could beat it, and he was wrong. But he also was working without a template.

So where does that leave us? For one thing, it means one of the greatest players of this generation is winding down his career. That his résumé is dappled with PED problems, even a suspension, doesn't make him less representative of the past two decades. It makes him more fundamentally a part of it.

And while many players appear to have used steroids in this time, few succeeded on the field as remarkably as Rodriguez. Unless you think PEDs are magic pills that conjure greatness from nothing, the chance to watch Rodriguez himself should be compelling.

How gripping will it be? Consider what Rodriguez did on the field. He broke into the big leagues at 18. At 20, he did things few players have done at any age: posted a .358/.414/.631 slash line (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage), while hitting at the Kingdome (so that his OPS+, which accounts for the ballparks in which he played, was a gaudy 161, fifth in the American League), and played Gold Glove-level defense at the most vital defensive position.

And that season wasn't an outlier. It fits comfortably in his peak.

As tempting as it seems to be in some quarters to disqualify all of that work because of the subsequent revelations, a more accurate context would be to point out that in a pretesting environment, Rodriguez was using an advantage that many of his competitors also were using. The more PEDs there were in the game — and it is doubtful we'll ever have a precise measure of it — the more Rodriguez's actions were simply reflective of the time.

Critics can't have it both ways. Either Rodriguez was emblematic of a huge problem, and thus his production must be considered real, or he was a lone outlier, all evidence to the contrary, and the amount of time and effort spent on this issue was overwhelmingly wasteful.

The other major reason people seem to hate Rodriguez is his inability to do himself any favors with the news media. And this one, to be frank, utterly perplexes me. Yes, baseball players spend time with the media. It is part of their jobs. The ones who excel at it manage to parlay that into plenty of additional opportunities, into more endorsement cash, into better Hall of Fame voting totals when they're finished playing.

But why we expect a player's ability to crush a baseball so young to mean he'll be at ease with microphones in front of him is beyond me. The skills are completely unrelated. Rodriguez, by his acknowledgment, lacked the education that college might well have provided. It also would have kept him out of the spotlight for a bit longer. He would have matured on his own timetable instead of into the big leagues at 18. He has been learning on the job ever since. I simply cannot hold it against him.

Really, few people seem to be angry at A-Rod anymore. Hank Aaron spoke out in support. Rodriguez's teammates, who likely know many other PED stories similar to his throughout baseball that never saw the light of day, also welcomed him. Only the Yankees seem angry about Rodriguez's return, with the absurdity reaching new heights last week when the front office, anonymously, made public its frustration with Rodriguez — get ready, this is pretty terrible — reporting to spring training early.

If you are a fan of the Yankees, a team starved for offense, the chance to root for an all-time great authoring a singular comeback story and helping the team maintain AL East relevance at the same time should be too good to pass up. Surely the PED anger can't overwhelm you — not if you also have tickets to go see Andy Pettitte's number retired this year.

And that the Yankees are so happy to honor Pettitte only reiterates their true issue, which is not Rodriguez's transgressions but the back end of a massive contract they offered Rodriguez (not at gunpoint, mind you) after the 2007 season that has three years and $61 million left to run. They don't want to pay it. There have even been rumblings about not paying Rodriguez the $6 million bonus he'll earn if he hits six homers to tie Willie Mays on the all-time home run list.

But if you root for 29 other teams, you have to be hoping that Rodriguez does it. The bean counters in New York aren't spending without a budget anymore. Each Rodriguez bonus helps your team win future free agent battles against the Yankees.

And who knows? Maybe that young boy who was raised by a single mother, asked to do so much so soon, has learned something from this ordeal. Is there anything more American than a comeback story, complete with cathartic emotional growth?

There's no guarantee it will play out this way, any more than there's a guarantee a player who turns 40 in July and hasn't faced big-league pitching since September 2013 is going to turn back the clock the way Ted Williams did in his final season. Such endings are rare in baseball and in life.

So are World Series titles, yet fans root, against the odds, for one each spring.

It is time to latch on to the Alex Rodriguez Story and wish for a happy ending.