MIAMI — Before he became A-Rod, A-Fraud and A-Roid, before he took muscle-building drugs, before Madonna and the Yankees and the half billion dollars, Alex Rodriguez was an innocent kid who dreamed of being a baseball hero.

He was, in fact, just like a lot of the kids playing Tuesday at the Southwest Boys and Girls Club under the lights and the huge sign in center field: Alex Rodriguez 40/40 Field.

They wore batting helmets too big for their little heads and pants too baggy for their skinny legs. They dropped fly balls and whiffed at bad pitches. But they played like they were in Game 7 of the World Series.

You could picture Rodriguez on the same field 25 years ago. He grew up here. The Boys and Girls Club on Southwest 32nd Avenue was his second home. He did his homework, played bumper pool, ate hot dogs, and practiced hitting, throwing and fielding for countless hours under the towering oak and ficus trees. When his mother worked late, he was here until midnight.

Today, his picture hangs in the main room of the club (along with that of Michael Phelps). His name is on the side of a brand new building: The Alex Rodriguez Education Center.

He is like a living patron saint to this place. He always comes around in the offseason, to work out, to hang out. He gives away Christmas gifts, holds baseball clinics, tutors students. To the kids, he was the ultimate role model, because he was one of them, made it big and never forgot his roots.

Now, though, a sense of confusion permeates the club. Fallibility isn't a concept kids can fully comprehend. But cheating is a word they know.

"Lots of kids want to wear No. 13," said Joshua Pastrana, 12, a catcher on the International Gold team. "Now it will be kind of embarrassing to wear that number."

A-Rod was simply a baseball star. Now he's something much more complicated. He's famous but controversial, a confessed steroid user, the heartbreaker of the juiced generation. His records in the coming years will be smudged with regret. The grand home run chase that was to erase the awful legacy of Barry Bonds will be tempered by doubt, scorn, pity.

Those jade eyes, as mesmerizing as his swing, what will fans read into them now as they parse forgiveness and cynicism?

Rodriguez's insecurity and insincerity kept him from being as beloved as he should have been. He faces a long penance.

"Ever since I was little, I told myself, 'Strive to be like Alex Rodriguez,' " said Francis Urbaez, an FIU student and native of the Dominican Republic who works part-time at the club.

"I looked up to him. Not anymore."

The man who hurts the most, besides Rodriguez himself, is Eddie Rodriguez, who is not related to A-Rod but who is like his second father. Eddie Rodriguez, director of the Southwest Boys and Girls Club, provided a sanctuary to Alex from the time he was 8 years old. Eddie has been mentor, coach, counselor. When he heard Alex admit — after a Sports Illustrated report — that he took steroids from 2001 through 2003, he couldn't believe it.

"I'm in shock," Eddie said in his office, which is filled with photos of A-Rod.

"I'm disappointed, but I will support him. He did something wrong, but he's also done so much for the community. I'm proud that he took the blame so he can go out and do what he does best with a bat and glove and help the Yankees win the World Series."

Still, Eddie seemed bewildered. What happened to the boy he knew? Alex Rodriguez used to go home with his mother, who worked two jobs, and she'd dump her tips on the bed and watch her son pick up a handful of coins and declare, "We're rich!" By then, his father had left the family, and Rodriguez would not speak to him for many years.

In baseball, he found pure joy.

"The reason for it, I don't understand," Eddie said. "He's the one player who doesn't need it, the best ever to put on a uniform. He will have to suffer the consequences."

Back out on Alex Rodriguez Field, the kids were ready to play. Among them was Rodriguez's nephew, the third baseman. He didn't want to talk. But his teammate, Matthew Santos, 11, understood how A-Rod, in his fall from grace, might yet be a role model again.

"He could have played just as good without drugs," said Santos, who is the spitting image of Rodriguez with his green eyes.

"Now he will have to work even harder."