Alex Rodriguez is released and leaves many questions. “At 18, I just wanted to make the team [Seattle Mariners]…a guy like me who’s been to hell and back.”

Unless unforeseen circumstances (e.g., a rainout; another club hoping to catch lightning in a bottle in 2018, or by some arrangement even in 2017) prevail, Alex Rodriguez will not play major-league ball after August 12, when he is released by the New York Yankees.

Against a backdrop of what absorbs the rest of the sports world, the 2016 Summer Olympic Games—a spectacle that has its share of performance-enhancing scandals—the timing is typically questionable. Welcome to A-Rod Land. Tomorrow, 8/8, is midsummer. For unknown reasons, the makeshift Sunday-morning announcement could not be delayed for Meridian Monday.

Whether there’s a curtain call round the Green Monster in Boston this week, where the Yankees play, is a question. Maybe, aetat. 45, he’d seek to Simonize his profile by managing a national team—USA or Dominican Republic—in the 2020 Olympics. He has made no secret of a desire to own, or have controlling interest in, a major-league team.

No doubt Rodriguez is one of the most gifted athletes ever on a baseball field. His work of personal redemption continues.