In public relations, as in life, you are judged by the company you keep.

And in the sad case of Alex Rodriguez, world's most talented and vilified baseball star, the new "company" he's keeping might likely have proven the final nail in A-Rod's astonishing descent to the bottom of the reputation well -- until Alex smartly pulled the plug last week, imposing a gag order on Joltin' Joe Tacopina, the new attorney hell bent on directing the misguided superstar on a one-way course  to oblivion.

That the publicity-prone Tacopina was hired in the first place reveals how truly lost Alex Rodriguez is.

Joe Tacopina is  a street-fighting denizen of cable TV ; criss-crossing the cable landscape, honing his reputation as   a TV barrister who  tells it like it is and lets the chips fall  where they may – always outspoken, always quotable.  

Largely as a result of  that tough-talking TV notoriety, Tacopina's client list read like  a  Rogue's Gallery of  rotten apples --- from  girl friend-bashing New York state Sen. Hiram Monserrate,  serving two years for  corruption;  to rap sheet rapper Foxy Brown,  who served hard time for throwing a Blackberry at a neighbor;  to "Sopranos" bit player Lillo Brancato, serving 10 years in an attempted burglary that left a cop dead; to cold-blooded killer Joran van der Sloot, serving 28 years for murder in Peru, who Tacopina earlier helped beat the rap in the disappearance case of Natalee Holloway.

Indeed, in representing reprobates like these, Tacopina honed his image as the "defender of the indefensible."

And two weeks ago, Counselor Tacopina added the distinguished name of Alex Rodriguez to this Who's Who list of losers.

The hiring decision, presumably, was  all A-Rod's. Rather than acting in his own best interests and hiring a low-key, connected, behind-the-scenes attorney, who could effectively maneuver in his client's best interests and let Rodriguez "speak" only with his on-field performance, A-Rod instead  retained precisely what he didn't need – a reputation-tainted, high profile,  in-your-face grand-stander, guaranteed to alienate the very people his client couldn't afford to rub the wrong way.

And sure enough, immediately out-of-the-box, A-Rod's new lawyer bolted into a two-part suicidal strategy, that, if left unchecked, would have led to his client's immediate immolation.

  • First, on the legal side, Tacopina threatened to sue the Yankees, Major League Baseball, A-Rod's doctors and anybody else with the temerity to challenge his new buddy. On the steroids issue, which originally triggered A-Rod's problems and of which Rodriguez was clearly guilty, Tacopina was uncharacteristically mute.
  • Second, on the public relations side, Tacopina told A-Rod to chill and leave the publicity to him;  instantly engaging in a whirlwind tour of any and every media platform to attack the methods and motives of his client's employer.

The strategy backfired almost from the initial Tacopina TV tantrum. The Yankees, who had up to now stood uncomfortably in support of Rodriguez, stormed back publicly at their wayward third baseman with, as Samuel L. Jackson once put it, "great anger and furious vengeance."  If A-Rod was stupid enough to bite the one hand left willing to feed him, then all bets were off.

What little goodwill A-Rod had left with even the most diehard of diehard Yankee fans was shriveling away.  And in a metaphoric salute to his head-scratching judgment, Rodriguez, was promptly and purposely plunked by a 90-mile-per-hour fastball from the hated Boston Red Sox. The A-Rod controversy, flamed by Tacopina's tirades, was rapidly reaching a point of no return for Rodriguez.

What ultimately stopped the Rodriguez death march and pulled back the rabid Tacopina was, for a change,  A-Rod himself.

 In a rare moment of common sense lucidity, Rodriguez realized that Tacopina's personal publicity onslaught -- at $750 an hour, no less! -- was the very last thing he needed to restore any semblance of public trust. Tacopina was single-handedly -- and with breathtaking speed -- destroying the last shreds of A-Rod's reputation.

And so, A-Rod mercifully announced last week that neither he nor anyone else would have anything further to say on the steroids issue; Tacopina was banished to the wood shed, where he would be forced to rail only at the walls (or until he quit Rodriguez's employ and made the inevitable rounds of the talk shows to blab about the experience).

And while others ponder the "crisis communications" pros and cons of A-Rod's dilemma, the facts in the matter are really crystal clear:

1.      Alex Rodriguez took banned steroids and lied about it after he promised he would never take them again.

2.      Rodriguez will receive a significant suspension from Major League Baseball, effective in 2014. 

3.      If said suspension turns out to be less than the 211 games originally stipulated, Tacopina (if he's still around) will take full credit!

4.      No matter how he performs on the field or carries himself off the field, Alex Rodriguez, already a rich but deeply-troubled and insecure young man, will wind up even more troubled and insecure and still rich.

But at least this once, in quickly deciding to muzzle his mad dog lawyer, A-Rod acted appropriately,  intelligently and just in the nick of time.