NEW YORK – At times, just not very often, you might wonder if Alex Rodriguez is paid nearly enough to have to take all that guff. Of course, it's precisely the amount he's paid that makes people want to give him so much guff.
Truth be told, Rodriguez was making people like him less and less before he ever left the secluded society of Seattle, two teams ago, even as he was establishing himself as perhaps the best all-around player of our time. Barry Bonds included.
More than half a decade has passed since Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks lost his pea-pickin' mind and signed Rodriguez to a $252 million contract, and while A-Rod has posted outstanding regular-season numbers until this year, he's also continued to just annoy the bejeezus out of people.
He's managed this in a fashion that's entirely different from Bonds' more blatant form of alienation. Bonds is at least up front in his disdain for folks, his sense of superiority, whereas A-Rod could run for office with what comes off as disingenuousness and borderline smarm. The word “poser” is frequently applied.
Baseball, however, ain't charm school. Not for issues of personality has Rodriguez been as vilified at home as Bonds is everywhere except home. Over the past month or so, A-Rod has been booed mercilessly, getting more abuse at Yankee Stadium than any of the locals can remember being heaped on a New York player.
“I've seen Derek Jeter booed here, seen Mariano Rivera booed here, seen Bernie Williams booed here, and I've really been booed here, but it's been coming down pretty hard on Alex,” said first baseman Jason Giambi. “It can be difficult being the 'new guy' in New York. I think it's because they remember you beating up on the Yankees with another team, so they want you to play that way for them and beat up on the other team. Nobody's above it. There are no free passes here. Mickey Mantle got booed, and now he's probably the most beloved Yankee of all.
“It's all how you handle it. If you stink, Yankee fans just want you to admit it. When I stunk, I said I stunk.”
So noted, apparently, by Rodriguez.
“I've been absolutely horsebleep this year,” A-Rod said before the start of this weekend's series against the Los Angeles Angels. “And I'm talking about every facet of the game.”
Every player should smell so bad at the plate as A-Rod, only 31 years old, but already up to 453 in career homers. With his 24 homers and 82 RBI this season, only a resurgent Giambi (33-91) is generating more power for the Yankees, back in their customary place atop the NL East. There is the possibility that Rodriguez will fall short of the 40-homer mark for only the second season since 1997, and at $25 million a year, Rodriguez cannot afford a dropoff of any kind.
He's certainly paying the public price for his lack of clutch hitting in last year's postseason series with the Angels – a trend that hasn't gone away this season – but it's not necessarily Rodriguez's offensive shortcomings that have New York coming down so hard on his case.
Still a man playing out of position, he's committed 20 errors, at least three more than any third baseman in the majors. His fielding percentage of .933 is dead last among big league regulars at his position. That cannon of an arm has turned into a spray gun. The fear is that Giambi won't ruin the discs in his back from swinging a bat, but from trying to block Rodriguez's throws from third.
At his worst, Rodriguez committed five E's in five games in mid-July. He went more than two weeks without a miscue but was 6 feet wide with a double-play throw to second Thursday night in Chicago.
“That thing,” said manager Joe Torre, “came out of nowhere.”
And wound up in right field. Typically, Rodriguez deflected the predictable questions about whether he was coming down with Chuck Knoblauch disease.
“I've always been a great thrower, and then I went through a week where I lost my touch,” said Rodriguez. “I think anybody who plays baseball has been through something like it.”
Not everybody is under such scrutiny and constant analysis. Nor such downright stupidity.
A totally crusted cynic would suggest that when Rodriguez took his wife and infant daughter to Central Park on the sun-baked afternoon of a night game, it was his attempt to act like a New York Everyman. He was seen shirtless, something others with far less athletic physiques also were doing in a city where such perfect-weather days are too infrequent.
Well, that night Rodriguez made three errors. There were those who blamed his night at the park on his afternoon in the park.
Huh?
“If you tell me I'm coming in from a club on drugs or half-drunk at five in the morning, now that's a story,” Rodriguez told the New York press. “The fact that I'm in Central Park at noon with my family ... come on. But you know, stories like that help me out because they make me realize how ridiculous some of this stuff is. And the team got a big laugh out of it. They're still busting my chops.”
Face it. The man can't win. Until he wins.
“Maybe you do get a longer leash when you come up in the Yankees system, guys like Jeter and Mariano and Bernie and Jorge,” said Giambi. “On the other hand, all those guys have four World Series (championship) rings.”
Chris Jenkins: (619) 293-1267;
chris.jenkins@uniontrib.com
