A-Rod Gets Thrown Under the Bus
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by user Icemanvt
It usually takes alot to make me feel sorry for someone who will make more this year than I will usually see in my lifetime. It's almost impossible for me to feel sorry for a Yankee, but the recent piece in Sports Illustrated made me feel rather sympathetic for the embattled Yankee star, Alex Rodriguez.
There's alot to disgest in this article, but it's also rather well written, so I'd encourage everyone to read through the entire thing. Here are a couple of choice quotes and my reactions to them:
- "Indeed, in December 2003, when the Red Sox were frantically trying to acquire Rodriguez from the Texas Rangers, several Boston executives called on Rodriguez in his New York hotel suite after 1 a.m. Rodriguez answered the door in a perfectly pressed suit, tie knotted tight to his stiff collar. The Red Sox officials found such polished attire at such a late hour odd, even unsettling (emphasis mine)." Wait, so you're trying to talk have a meeting a 1 AM and you're calling A-Rod's behavior unsettling? So what if he wants to look good? Then again, this is the team that employed Kevin Millar, so maybe the Red Sox's reaction isn't that surprising.
- "What bothered Torre most was Rodriguez's seeming obliviousness to how badly he was playing. In June, for instance, hitting coach Don Mattingly ordered Rodriguez into the cage and sternly lectured him on the flaws in his swing, which Mattingly thought A-Rod had been unwilling to address. 'An intervention,' Mattingly called it. 'He got to a pretty good point with [his swing], but it lasted only a few days and he went right back to where he was.'" Ignoring that A-Rod is twice the hitter Mattingly ever was in his prime, maybe A-Rod doesn't like it when people get on his case with orders and lectures. It's not like this is boot camp, Don.
- If there's someone that comes out poorly (in my eyes) in all this, is known apologizer Jason Giambi. Three gems:
- "This season, for instance, he reprimanded his former Oakland A's teammate, Orioles shortstop Miguel Tejada, for occasionally showing up late to games out of frustration over another losing Baltimore season. "You're better than that," he told Tejada." Maybe it's his personality, but Giambi looks like he still has a case of the 'roid rage. And if I was Tejada, I'd tell the juicer to STFU, and mind his own team, especially if he's not in the mess that is the Orioles.
- "We're all rooting for you and we're behind you 100 percent," Giambi recalls telling Rodriguez, "but you've got to get the big hit." "What do you mean?" was Rodriguez's response, according to Giambi. "I've had five hits in Boston." "You f------ call those hits?" Giambi said. "You had two f------ dinkers to rightfield and a ball that bounced over the third baseman! Look at how many pitches you missed!"
- "He's guessing," Giambi said, "and he's doing a bad job of it, which is inevitable when you guess as often as he guesses." Now, there's an insult if I've ever heard one.
- "The Yankees, the last baseball bastion in which beards and individualism are verboten, foster a Prussian efficiency." Yeah, and we all know what happened to Prussia in ole WWI, don't we?
- I actually like most of what Reggie Jackson said in the piece. The parable, the stories. Sure, it was very tangential to relating to A-Rod, but he (and David Oritz) come out as the only people interviewed in the piece who aren't doing a hatchet job on A-Rod, even if he has to get his shot on A-Rod at the end.
This story actually reminds me of my time playing Babe Ruth baseball during the summer in HS. While I have about 1/10,000,000 of the talent of A-Rod, I can see the similarities in how we react to other people and how we react to adversity. I tend to withdraw and try and think through situations, like A-Rod apparently does. I also tend to not want to verbially explode when things go wrong, or even show too much emotion out there. There's alot of striving for perfection in what he does and when shit goes wrong, he overthinks about past mistakes. I did the same thing, going through the problems of overthinking things when I was throwing the ball.
I also think it has a ton to do with his teammates. The Yankees clubhouse reminds me alot of my HS locker room, where teammates would form cliques and the players would follow the lead of the popular/best player, rightly or wrongly. I think the same thing is happening here with respect to Derek Jeter. Jeter is the leader of the Yankees. Jeter also dislikes A-Rod. Hell, when A-Rod was first signed, people wanted JETER, not A-Rod, to switch positions. I don't think Jeter's gotten over that, and as the captain, has pretty much poisoned the clubhouse against A-Rod. Probably to the team's detriment in the end, especially if A-Rod goes south at the wrong time in October.
I really feel sorry for A-Rod, as he didn't deserve getting thrown under the bus by his teammates. Nobody is going to defend him as long as Jeter's around. Probably the best solution for him would be to get the hell out of New York while he still has his mental health. I personally know that there's only so long you can deal with that type of atmosphere before it destroys you.
Come this October, I sincerely hope that A-Rod bats 1.000. And the Yankees get swept in three games.
Date
Wed 09/20/06, 1:41 pm EST
