Alex Rodriguez will be facing an 0-2 count when he meets with baseball investigators after a spring training game Sunday in Sarasota, Fla., so he cannot afford another swing and a miss.

He lied about the drug details when he did his Peter Gammons interview on ESPN, and threw another knuckleball with the truth in his news conference the following week.

No punishment is in the books for misleading the media and millions of viewers and readers, nothing but a heavy dose of public ridicule and shame. And A-Rod does public ridicule and shame like no baseball star since, I don't know, Pete Rose?

But if Rodriguez plays the MLB suits for fools, if he tells them a chemically enhanced fairy tale that unravels with subsequent disclosures of steroid use, then he could get himself good and suspended.

Up front, understand this isn't going to be an easy process for A-Rod, even if he pulls up to the meeting with enough heavyweight lawyers to fill a Greyhound bus.

Rodriguez isn't a smart cookie or a smooth talker. If he had a dime for every dumb thing he's said and done as a Yankee, he wouldn't need the absurd $275 million contract and the even more absurd $30 million home-run bonus tethered to it.

When A-Rod opens his mouth, bad things happen. He will have to open his mouth before baseball investigators who won't be handcuffed by any ban on follow-up questions.

Who knows what story Rodriguez will tell this time, and whether that story will make life more miserable for the Yanks. Team officials have to be nervous. They've been nervous the moment Rodriguez started talking about his mystery cousin, the steroid injector later identified as Yuri Sucart.

They knew ol' Yuri wasn't going to lead to a good place. They knew that before Sucart pulled up at the site of the Yankees' first spring training game and, incredibly enough, picked up A-Rod as if they had an appointment to check out some new potion or pill.

The Yanks creamed Rodriguez on that one, yet they know another bimbo eruption is likely around the bend. Saturday, A-Rod told reporters in Tampa he would be on Sunday's 9 a.m. bus to the road game with the Reds "unless I hear otherwise."

Joe Girardi expected his megastar in the lineup, and said Rodriguez was hoping the MLB meeting wouldn't happen Sunday. Of course, Rodriguez has been hoping the meeting wouldn't happen Sunday, Monday or any day over the balance of his career.

But yes, it's going to happen. It's expected to happen after the game in Sarasota. It isn't scheduled to be held on Yankee property, and truth be told, the team wants nothing to do with it.

Rodriguez has confessed to performance-enhancing sins in 2001, 2002 and 2003, back when the Yankees couldn't fathom that a pickup basketball injury to Aaron Boone would drop A-Rod in their laps.

Still, Rodriguez is their player and their problem now. Though players who copped to steroid use before baseball's penalty phase kicked in have been spared punishment, Girardi said of the A-Rod interview, "I think you have to be a little bit concerned any time you're going in front of major league baseball. ... I'm hoping it's a fact-finding mission and that he's set to go on April 6."

Rodriguez can't lie this time around. He can't dodge the investigators' questions, either. When they ask if anyone other than his cousin aided his drug use, anyone in or around the Seattle, Texas or Yankee clubhouses, A-Rod needs to tell it straight.

He also needs to answer for the testosterone he reportedly tested positive for — A-Rod has only indirectly confirmed the reported Primobolan use — and needs to explain his infamous "Tic Tacs" reference in his news conference after saying he took steroids through injections, and not orally.

Baseball officials aren't looking to punish Rodriguez for crimes committed before their penal code was put in place. That doesn't mean A-Rod can treat this inquiry like a spring training at-bat against some minor league arm.

MLB investigators want to play hardball. Better late than never, they want to do whatever they can to tear down a vile culture of drugs.

If Rodriguez was planning to deceive them, he might want to consult a different playbook.