Evil Empire has its villain
May 31, 2007
By Scott Carson, Sportsnet.ca
May 30, 2007, will go down as the darkest day in the first-ballot Hall of Fame career of one Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez, aka A-Rod, the infinitely talented yet "without-get" Yankees' third Baseman.
He awoke to a glorious Toronto morning on Wednesday when word got to him that the vampires from the New York Post followed him around on Sunday evening, an evening that allegedly involved a trip to the Brass Rail and subsequent accompaniment of a buxom blonde back to His hotel. And I say His with the capital 'H' because the rest of his team, apparently, was staying at a different five-star hotel, somewhere else. Hours later, A-Rod closed out his Wednesday by doing something that got the Toronto Blue Jays so charged up that they wanted a piece of him.
First of all, regarding the Post front-page story headlined 'Stray-Rod', I have no opinion on it, except the fact that the N.Y. media will always to find the basement under rock bottom. I can't believe that a newspaper would send a reporter and/or cameraperson to stalk an off-duty baseball player in a foreign country. On the list of things that the mainstream American media should be covering, this is way down the list. In fact, it's not even on the list. But alas, they continue to follow around celebrities and then practically soil themselves when Lindsay Lohan wraps her car around a tree.
But what happened with two out in the top of the ninth of 10-5 Yankees win added another smear across the jersey of No. 13. Rodriguez can make feeble denials all he wants, but we all saw -- from several replay angles -- he yelled "Mine" as he ran behind Howie Clark near third base, causing the Jays' infielder to believe he was being called off by shortstop John McDonald. The ball fell untouched by any Jay while an insurance run scored. This set off a firestorm which saw several Blue Jays approach Rodriguez to let him know that his actions were bush league. And we also saw him say, "F*** 'em" to Yankees third base coach Larry Bowa. For all to see, baseball's highest paid player showed himself to be a classless boor. Win at all costs, indeed. As if being rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams and getting to hang with Toronto's finest strippers isn't enough. Talk about greed!
Now comes the fall out. Word travels quick through the baseball fraternity and the Jays might not be the only team to let him know he was wrong. You see, professional sports all have unwritten codes. In hockey, the tough guys fight the tough guys. In football, you don't run the score up when the outcome is decided. In basketball, the rules for the stars are different from the rest. And in baseball, they'll allow cheating -- spitballs and the stealing of signs -- but they don't allow deception. That's why they have the balk rule which punishes a pitcher for "deceiving" the base runner as the rule book states.
What will the Jays do to exact their revenge on A-Rod's indiscretion? Well, they'll probably drill him with a pitch the next time they meet, or slide hard into him at third. And how the Yankees respond to that will tell us exactly how they felt about what he did, and will also tell us about Rodriguez's future in pinstripes.
Circle July 16 on your calendars, folks. On baseball's biggest stage we'll get to witness a talented superstar arrive a the crossroads of his career.
Excuses, Excuses
Top five things A-Rod should have said after getting caught with a mystery blonde in the streets of T.O.
1. I was doing research on being the best blonde bombshell that I could be... What? Ohhh... it's Bronx Bomber, not blonde bombshell.
2. It doesn't count if you're in another country.
3. I got lost and she offered to take me back to my hotel.
4. When she said "Your hotel, or mine?" I said "Hah!" but she misunderstood me.
5. Does swinging mean something different in Canada?
HELD THEIR OWN
It will be just over 20 days and one hour since we learned that Jays ace Roy Halladay was in surgery having his appendix removed and when he returned to the mound. Quite miraculous, frankly, when the original downtime diagnosis was pegged at four to six weeks. But when the fact that Halladay is a workout fiend is factored in, his superior physical condition should not be discounted and played a major role in his speedy recovery. And in the time he was disabled, the Blue Jays young pitching staff more than held their own and, in fact, gives those of us in the 'Glass-Is-Half-Empty' Club reason to look forward to the future. As a team, the Jays went 11-7 over that span, this coming on the heels of a nine-game losing streak. A.J. Burnett stepped into Halladay's staff ace spikes, going 3-1 with an ERA of 2.67 while throwing a pair of complete games among his four starts. Shaun Marcum was even better, compiling a 2.16 ERA but was held to only one win thanks to low run support. And Dustin McGowan finally showed all the promise that was hinted at by the Jays front office when he held the Yankees to a pair of runs over 7 2/3 innings on Monday night. Rarely would you say that a trip to the disabled list by your best pitcher would be a good thing. But in this case it was and gave the Jays a boost at a crucial point in the season.
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