So here’s a professional athlete on the top of his game, with — at the time — the largest contract ever. His cousin in the Dominican Republic offers him a street concoction that will give him more energy. They’re not sure what it is, but the cousin brings it into the U.S. and the pro allows him to inject him about three dozen times over three seasons. He’s not sure if it’s helping or if the substance is a banned steroid or other supplement. But he keeps taking it anyway.

And then, he says, he stops abruptly because he’s gotten a little older and a little wiser. And oh, by the way, he had a neck injury and it got him worried.

That’s Alex Rodriguez’s story and he’s sticking to it…at least for now.

Forget that it’s unbelievable on it’s face.

Forget that he admits he likely wouldn’t have come forward were it not for the recent report in Sports Illustrated and a later interview with ESPN.

Rodriguez made it clear he wants to get on with baseball, to be surrounded by his teammates, embraced by the Yankees management. All forgive and praise the next home run champion of baseball, the man who would snatch the tainted title from Barry Bonds.

But wait. There were no follow up questions today in Tampa, in a press conference orchestrated by the Yankees. Rodriguez sidestepped many of the questions and just didn’t reply to others.

The episode, he said early on, was “a stupid mistake and a lesson learned.”

But reporters, true baseball fans and maybe even some Yankee apologists will  have many more questions  throughout Spring Training, into the season and probably into A-Rod’s retirement years, when he hopes everyone will look the other way and enshrine him in the Hall of Fame.

Who is you cousin? What’s his name? He’s not saying.

If it wasn’t helping, why keep doing it for three years? He was young and curious, he says.

Do you consider what you did cheating. “That’s not for me to determine.”

How could you not know what you were doing? It was over the counter stuff, he says.

Should you statistics from those years be wiped away? There will be a lot of debate over that, he says.

If you didn’t think what you were doing was wrong, why did you hide it from everyone? “I knew we weren’t taking Tic Tacs.”

When Mark McGwire was before Congress, his mantra was, “I’m not here to talk about the past.”

Today, A-Rod’s  became “I was young and curious.”

But there were hints of McGwire, too.

“Spring Training represents a new start for me,” he says.

And, later, “I hope, after my career is over, the evidence falls in my favor.”

His last words the the day: “Judge me from this day forward.”

If only life worked that way.

It’s more likely, after today’s press conference and his half approach to the truth, that another of his observations is more likely to come to pass.

Asked about the questions that follow from his truth by the dose approach with Katie Couric, Sports Illustrated and others, he said, “I may have to answer for the rest of my life.”