Yankees' Alex Rodriguez now the most wanted criminal in baseball history on ...

In this, baseball's requiem for the steroids plague that has tarnished the game's integrity and made a mockery of the home run records, A-Rod has not only been one of the biggest cheats of all, but he is also believed to have sought to impede MLB's investigation. Corey Sipkin/New York Daily News

Alex Rodriguez has become Public Enemy No. 1, a bigger villain than Shoeless Joe, Pete Rose, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

Amid the fallout from Ryan Braun's acceptance of a 65-game suspension from baseball - which subsequently has lent credibility to whatever evidence and testimony Tony Bosch was able to provide MLB investigators with in the Biogenesis scandal - Alex Rodriguez was reportedly in Miami Tuesday, no doubt pondering his own options now that a far worse penalty is looming for him.

Whether he realizes it or not, A-Rod is the Whitey Bulger of baseball, the most wanted criminal in the game's history, more condemned by MLB authorities than Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Black Sox Eight in 1920, Pete Rose in 1989 or Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds in 2008.

Why do I say this? Because in this, baseball's requiem for the steroids plague that has tarnished the game's integrity and made a mockery of the home run records, A-Rod has not only been one of the biggest cheats of all, but he is also believed to have sought to impede MLB's investigation by helping to secure lawyers for some of the witnesses in the case.

Among those witnesses is his infamous "Cousin Yuri" Sucart, whose name shows up on all of the same records seized from Bosch's Biogenesis operation as Rodriguez's does.

That's Cousin Yuri, as in the person A-Rod identified in 2009 as having provided him with performance-enhancing drugs when he was with the Rangers. Sources told the Daily News that it is believed Cousin Yuri introduced many of the players named in the documents to Bosch.

If baseball indeed has hard evidence of all of this, in addition to proof A-Rod has been a serial violator of baseball's joint drug agreement in terms of procuring and taking performance-enhancing drugs himself - all at a time when Bud Selig and the Players Association have been diligently working together to clean up the game once and for all - then you can see why he comes off as the worst kind of offender in baseball's eyes.

You can see why Selig wants to come down as hard he does on someone who blatantly flaunted the toughest drug testing program in professional sports; on someone who, in effect, represented baseball when he joined up with the Taylor Hooton Foundation to counsel youngsters about the evils of steroids; on someone who has lied repeatedly, both publicly and to baseball authorities, about his involvement with PEDs.

A-Rod is said to be resting that sore quad that prevented him from joining the Yankees in Texas this week, all the while painting himself as the victim in all of this to anyone who will listen. He wants everyone to believe that it is the Yankees who are going out of their way to keep him off the field, even though he was the one who brought up the quad issue last week.

But as the walls of baseball justice are closing in on him, he has to know there is nowhere to turn now, no one other than his lawyers and handlers to still stand by him. Among the rank-and-file major league players, other than maybe Robinson Cano, with whom he shares a mutual association with Jay-Z, he has zero supporters. For it is the players themselves who have forced this issue; told their leadership, executive director Michael Weiner and his lieutenants, they want a clean game and those who continue to try to beat the system punished and, when merited, punished severely.

The players are sick and tired of having the cloud of steroid suspicion hanging over them and their game, and that is why the union has changed its stance and no longer is fighting vigorously for the 5% known cheaters at the expense of the 95% clean players.

At the All-Star Game, Selig told a meeting of the Baseball Writers Association that the most comprehensive drug program in professional sports is only as strong as the enforcement of it - and with the Braun suspension, it's become eminently clear that baseball's enforcement arm is a force to be reckoned with.

There is every indication baseball has A-Rod on multiple years of drug involvement, and that, along with his involvement with admitted human growth hormone proponent Anthony Galea, would seem to be more than enough to warrant the "strike three" lifetime suspension under the terms of the joint drug agreement.

In any case, you can be sure Selig wants to rid baseball of him forever, just the way Kenesaw Mountain Landis ridded baseball of Shoeless Joe and the others forever, and Bart Giamatti did the same with Rose.

If I were A-Rod, instead of wasting time cultivating this "victim" image, I'd be mimicking Adam Schiff, the craggy-faced New York district attorney in "Law and Order" and start grousing at his lawyers to "make a deal."

That's assuming Selig and his men are even open to one with someone they consider to be baseball's Public Enemy No. 1.