Nothing truly condemnable here, but Tyler Kepner had some thoughts on A-Rod in the New York Times this week:
Alex Rodriguez’s choice of music in spring training was perfectly fitting for his personality. As he prepared for the season, he played the Pat Benatar song “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” over and over, at high volume, in his earphones.
This is amazing. Perfect encapsulation of how incredibly un-baseball-cool A-Rod is. Do you think he stays up late playing "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" on Karaoke Revolution trying to get a perfect score on Expert?
With the Yankees starting their division series Thursday in Cleveland, Rodriguez is under immense pressure to prove he is more than a regular-season wonder.
Broken record alert: A-Rod has had some good playoffs before, but of course they do not count because they occurred in the uniform of a rainy Northwestern city's team. All non-Yankees playoff series are officially exhibitions and should not be entered into the historical record.
“What I’m looking for is more than a handful of at-bats,” Rodriguez said. “We need the team to play well, play deep into October. There’s been stretches this year where I’ve been 1 for 12, 1 for 10, 2 for 18; that’s just part of it. I’m hoping to get 50 or 60 at-bats and help the team win.”
Alex Rodriguez gets it. He gets it more than all of the people criticizing him, which must be frustrating for him. Even in this, another unbelievable MVP season, of course he had stretches where he made a bunch of outs in a row. That's how the game works. People are judging the man based on short strings of at bats scattered across years and years of baseball when in between those at bats, he's performing historic feats of greatness.
That said, I hope he goes 0-for-the-series and the media forces him out of New York. That would be sweet.
Rodriguez knows he is the last hitter opponents will let beat them. If the Yankees do not clog the bases in front of him, the Indians will probably force Rodriguez to chase pitches off the plate, the way the Angels did in 2005.
And we have a clog the bases sighting. I don't even understand what Kepner's going for, putting it in this context. Putting men on base in front of Alex Rodriguez is maybe the best thing you can do in baseball, and calling it clogging makes it sound so...Liquid-Plumr-y. Plus, the guys in front of A-Rod in the lineup are Johnny Damon, Derek Jeter and Bobby Abreu, three generally fairly speedy men.
Maybe Kepner is a secret ally and he's trying to take back "clog the bases" by spinning it as a positive thing, sort of like the n word. Yeah, that's definitely it. Clogging the bases is the n word.
Labels: a-rod, clogging up the basepaths, the n word
