Alex Rodriguez misrepresented himself when he found employment with the Yankees. In effect, he lied on his resume.

Everybody's All-American turned out to be a two-bit cheat whose talents were exaggerated if not created in a chemist's lab.

In the real world, the Yankees would do what employers always do when they discover an employee has deceived them. They'd fire Rodriguez. Fire him and fight him over the balance of the absurd wages they never should've given him in the first place.

In the fantasy world of professional sports, where a contract is guaranteed and a man's honor is not, the Yankees will stand by A-Rod the way they stood by Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte.

What a crying shame. At a time of epic unemployment, a multimillionaire who deserves to lose his job will keep it.

The $275 million man looked about 10 cents tall in his pseudo-confession to ESPN's Peter Gammons. In typical A-Rodian form, Rodriguez insisted he was blaming only the man in the mirror for his misdeeds, at least until it was time to blame the lady in the bushes, Selena Roberts of Sports Illustrated.

Roberts has more credibility in her pinkie toe than Rodriguez has in his artificially enhanced body, and A-Rod's attempt to assign his Single White Female obsession with Derek Jeter (courtesy of Joe Torre's book) to Roberts' professional reporting on his steroid use — reporting he confirmed, of course — did nothing to bolster the ballplayer's case.

In fact, this was A-Rod's most credible claim to Gammons: "I was stupid. I was an idiot."

Better to put that in the present tense.

Rodriguez has scripted his own big, fat Greek tragedy. How can the Yankees possibly build the next nine seasons around this admitted fraud?

President Obama can win a second term, complete that term, and Rodriguez's contract says he'll still have another season in the Bronx at third base.

The fans don't want him. His teammates don't want him. Even the old-timers have had their fill.

"I was just across the street having a beer when all the TV kept showing was A-Rod hitting homers," Whitey Ford said from his Florida home. "I made the owner of the place change the channel. I don't know A-Rod, but this steroid thing is the same story over and over, and I'm sick of it."

Aren't we all?

"If we had a few beers in my day we got nervous," Ford said. "How do you get a steroid in your body, anyway?"

Maybe A-Rod should clue him in.

Here's what Rodriguez was selling Monday: I lied to Katie Couric then, and I'm telling the truth to Peter Gammons now.

The boxing promoter, Bob Arum, couldn't have said it any better.

Rodriguez's story this time around sounded like one read to him by a 6-year-old. He's sure he took banned substances as a Texas Ranger, but he's not sure what those substances were.

He's sure someone gave him the bad stuff, but he's not sure who that someone was. He's sure he used steroids only in 2001, 2002 and 2003, but when asked to reconfirm the timeline he says, "That's pretty accurate, yes."

Pretty accurate. As is A-Rod's description of the drug-crazy times.

"A loosey-goosey era," he called it. When he remembered he wasn't being asked about Woodstock, Rodriguez referred to "the Balco and Mitchell Era."

Soon to be known as the A-Rod Era.

Rodriguez did everything but tell Gammons that the dog ate his conscience. No matter how often A-Rod swore he's lived the clean Yankee life since the day he arrived in 2004, his story of a middle-of-the-night spring training epiphany in Arizona in 2003 isn't any more believable than his 553 home runs.

"I know I have millions of fans out there that won't ever look at me the same," Rodriguez said.

Actually, most of them already thought A-Rod was a phony.

So now what? Some Yankees' officials surely would love to fire Rodriguez, but they don't feel they have the grounds to act. A-Rod turned up dirty on a test meant to be anonymous, and one designed to impose no penalties on the perps.

If the Yankees cut him, they'd likely have to eat his record contract, pay for a new third baseman and watch A-Rod drive in runs for someone else. "It just wouldn't make sense to do it," said one member of the Yankee family.

"They didn't void Giambi's contract, and he was hitting .220, so it's hard to envision them going after A-Rod," said Bob Costello, a partner in Levy, Tolman & Costello and a lawyer who's worked some big Yankee cases.

"The evidence most unfavorable to A-Rod involves something that happened with a different team six years ago, so the Yankees won't touch this. A-Rod's going to be their third baseman."

Yippee. Unlucky No. 13, a living monument to back-room pharmacology, will be the centerpiece of the new stadium through 2017.

Who's to say Rodriguez won't use performance-enhancing drugs in the future? Who's to say he didn't quietly return to the dark side, and didn't quietly outfox the testers at some point during his five tumultuous years as a Yankee?

A-Rod says he's been drug-free, but A-Rod's on record as a liar. He also says the pressure of living up to his $252 million deal in Texas left him feeling "like I had all the weight of the world on top of me."

Even before he was rewarded with a sweeter deal in the Bronx, Rodriguez faced far more pressure as a Yankee than he did as a Ranger. He was expected to win multiple championships for the world's most famous team, and to make Jeter's franchise his. He's 0-for-2 so far.

The burden gets 20 times heavier from here, and A-Rod knows it. He conceded he's "going to be on trial for the next nine years."

In the real world, the Yankees would make sure that trial is held somewhere else. For betraying his sport, his team, his fans and himself, Alex Rodriguez deserves to lose his job.