Mike Celizic

We don’t do this more than once a year, if that often. But sometimes, we have to give credit where it’s due, even if it hurts to do so.

This is one of those times, and the person who dearly deserves a pat on the back and a rousing attaboy is everybody’s favorite human piñata — Alex Rodriguez. In fact, he deserves more than that. The man who we will refuse this day to call A-Fraud should get a standing ovation for human decency above and beyond the call of duty.

A-Rod’s bright and shining moment came while recording an interview with YES, the Yankees’ house cable network. The question had to do with the 103 other players who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs six years ago who did not get outed as he was earlier this year.

If most of us were in his shoes, we’d be madder than a dyspeptic wolverine at being the only person held up to public ridicule and scorn over a test that was supposed to remain anonymous. Back when the story was breaking, I wrote that baseball owed it to A-Rod to release the rest of the names. It was and is unfair to single one player out and let 103 others get off without having a chance to share in his ignominy.

But A-Rod doesn’t want that. He knows what he went through when the doo-doo hit the ventilator, and he doesn’t think anyone else should have to go through the same thing.

“This is really about my mistake,” Rodriguez told YES, according to published reports. “Many nights I fell asleep thinking about who I can blame. When I woke up I kept coming back to the same person. It’s me. There’s no one else to blame. I hope those 103 names never come out.”

There’s a word for that, and it’s one I’ve rarely used in connection with any athlete and never thought I’d apply to Rodriguez. The word is noble. It means rising above the crowd and base human instinct and doing the right thing, even when there is no benefit in doing it.

If ever there were anyone who could be excused for wanting to drag someone else down with him, it would be A-Rod. From the beginning of his time with the Yankees in 2004, he’s been hit over the head with his every misstep and slip.

At first, it was about his postseason troubles that began during the epic seven-game ALCS loss to the Red Sox. Later, his personal life somehow became fair game.

When he went out with what the tabloids love to call a buxom blonde in Toronto, The New York Post got pictures and played them big. When he came home to explain it to his spouse, the tabloids were outside his apartment with cameras ready.

His divorce was a public matter. When he became the latest in a long line of athletes and celebrities to drop in on Madonna, that, too, was tabloid fodder. The steroid story broke this spring, and he couldn’t turn on the radio or television or open his web browser without learning that he was the most disgusting scum ever born of woman. And he wasn’t getting into the Hall of Fame.