Take A-Trip into A-Rod's A-Future!

If it's an even year, everyone hates A-Rod and he's only 2nd in the AL in OPS instead of MVP, so it's no surprise that here in New York, no one is talking about the Red Sox. Double Play-Rod is the phrase du jour.

So I'd love to talk more about what an enjoyable game yesterday's victory was, from its rekindling my love affair with Coco Crisp (timely bloop hitting, clever and incredibly daring baserunning to score from 2nd on an infield single, something I've never seen before and something Coco had to be thinking of at just one glance at the ol' Dancing Mustachioed Bear there at 1st base), Justin Masterson (one thing he can do is induce the ground ball), Hideki Okajima (the precision-thrown curve he struck his fellow Hideki out with was a BALLsy pitch on a 3-2 count), and Terry Francona (for reshuffling the bullpen and putting Delcarmen into the Aardsma role, the wisdom of which was promptly rewarded with two walks and a single).

Yes, I'd love to. But when in Rome, act like the Romans. When in Brooklyn, we contemplate all the nicknames A-Rod's stupid nickname has spawned, and what may be next. Yes, this is Alex Rodriguez, past and future, two or so syllables at a time.



Babe-Rod

A-Child

A-Kid

A-Rod

A-Fraud (say the Mariners fans as he leaves for the $$$)

A-Yawn (the collective impact, in wins, of his Texas time)

Gay-Rod (Alex gets to make his first trips to Boston, Fenway fan base descends accordingly with A-Rod has AIDS t-shirts, I roll my eyes and open another bottle of Knob Creek)

Stray-Rod (she's kinda hideous except in a generic blonde sense, too)

Hey!-Rod (when this bullshit went down)

A-God (my friend Nick's name for him last season, fully justified; he was then promptly struck down by a bolt of lightning and A-Rod promptly sucked in another Yankees ALDS exit)

Double Play-Rod

Alimony-Rod

A-Bawd? (Alex Rodriguez's number found in Tampa madam's little red book; no charges filed.)

Overpaid-Rod! (NY Post headline at the conclusion of 2009 season, when he only hits, gasp, 32 HRs)

A-Mob (Yankee Stadium crowd attacks the field after Alex Rodriguez grounds out to end the last game of the season, putting the Yanks out of the playoffs for the third straight season. Alex survives with minor injuries, multiple foreign objects embedded in various locations.)

A-Slob (34-year-old Rodriguez shows up to spring training looking like Ray King. Has a resurgent power year in spite of "Fatty fatty fat fat!" taunts league-wide)

A-Hob(bled) (severe knee injury)

Kra-Rod (NY Post headline as "long-time good friends" Lenny Kravitz and Cynthia Rodriguez are wed. Editor who came up with this headline promptly fired.)

Blue Jay-Rod (or Ray-Rod, L.A.-Rod, Padre-Rod, or whatever pasture of the moment he is put out to spend his last years in)

Hall of Fame-Rod

A-Sob (In an interview with the New York Daily PostNews-Gazette-Shopper, Alex admits to not feeling his legacy has been appreciated. Interview followed with seven pages of scathing editorials making fun of him; rest of the paper, as is traditional for Daily PostNews-Gazette-Shopper, consists of hardcore pornography.)

Slay-Rod (Imagine your own tawdry murder fantasy.)

A-Corpse

Now that's what I call a rivalry.

You knew (maybe) that after A-Rod's divorce something like this was coming. That Tek. His skills are waning, and his divorce won't have the star power of Alex's, but his competitiveness sure is relentless.

Alex Rodriguez: The anti-Mo Vaughn.

Awesome! The humanization/villainization of Alex Rodriguez continues, this time by the New York Times' article "A-Rod’s Properties and Charity Suggest Some Decrepitude of Soul." (Er, "Stinginess," that was supposed to read. Honest mistake.") This article describes some crappy apartment buildings owned by Mr. Rod in Tampa, FL, with carpets stained from the '90s, rickety banisters, piles of old mattresses rotting by the dumpsters, residents quoted as saying things like "Honestly, I was raised in a ghetto and I was brought up a little better than this." Oh, and managers who manage to lose the rent, then kick out tenants for missing rent.

How the fuck do you lose the rent? A gust of Florida can blow away the wind. It can't blow the money on lottery tickets and...whatever else there is to spend money on in Tampa. Flimsy summer suits? Salsa records? Also, A-Rod donated less than $6K to charity in 2005. And his shitty properties have LOST value!

Eh, whatever. We all know that it isn't possible to make money and not be evil. And baseball players don't make great businesspeople, especially not in real estate. I can't think of a single former MLB player who is making money in real estate while doing good work to make project buildings genuine residences.



But you know whose apartment buildings wouldn't be falling apart? Derek Jeter. Now that guy knows how to hire a clutch carpenter, and get his evictions done in April, when it doesn't count as much. Jeter knows not to cut corners or cheat on anything. Because all of your mistakes can come back to you:

Is the Jackson 5 Alex Rodriguez? The Yankees?

In either case, the love is back...sorta. I feel oddly happy about this movement, actually. Count the blessings:

1) Alex Rodriguez would not be a Sox.
2) The Yankees would not have a chance of bumping up the price for Mike Lowell or signing him outright.
3) The New York tabloids will be entertaining for another year, especially the evil one. Evil and obsessive...all they do is think of you, Alex:



4) Scott Boras will be the first agent to negotiate himself OUT of the negotiations for a high-priced client! Brilliant.

But then, there's the problem:

5) A scary fucking (regular season) hitter would return to the Bronx.

Well, scary and hilariously competitive.



Yeah, come to think of it, sign him, New York. Sign him for fifteen years.

Becks, Rod, and Jeter: World-beaters.

Beckham meets the Yankees. But are these photographs real, or do Beckham, Jeter, and Rodriguez (especially Rodriguez) actually look like cardboard cutouts? Because that itself would make Fathead a more verite product than I imagined. But you're still a fucking moron to pay $99 to put this on your wall:



Double demerit points if you're out of college and own one. Get a life.

Dear Red Sox,

Don't do it. Larry, I know you still have a hard-on for him, and hey, he's a good looking guy, better still when he's utterly mashing. Mike Lowell's gonna be a free agent anyway, unless Alex can still play SS, in which case maybe a buncha moving around will put Lugo in a position he's better suited to, like...the league's most expensive utility infielder? Never mind. I'm not here to tell you how signing A-Rod to a gajillion dollar contract would work.

I'm begging you not to offer that contract, kick up rumors, or otherwise break my heart. I'm not ashamed to say I had my heart broken when we lost A-Rod; hindsight says, "Nice thing we kept Manny; Orlando Cabrera was a nice pickup too; and fuck that overpriced 3B headcase in the Bronx." (Headcase label doesn't apply currently: no one's got anxiety when they've got a 2,000.000 OPS.) I was excited by the prospects of having the best player in the league wearing red, white, and navy, and it's revisionism to say there weren't tens of millions like me in the 2003-04 off-season. But not now.



I know Boston baseball fans will support almost anything in a Sox uniform if it's hitting/pitching well (see above, OF on the Red Sox All-Insane Team), but beyond the limited successes of recent former Yankee pickups (remember Ramiro Mendoza? No? Oh. Sorry for bringing up the subject.), one must remember one thing about A-Rod: Boston doesn't like him. The slap play, the nasty take-out of Dustin Pedroia earlier this year well outside the basepaths on a broken double play, the infamous/famous brawl with Varitek, all of this isn't exactly under the bridge yet and may never be. But there's a bigger reason I really don't like A-Rod.



I got my share of hatin' for getting good grades in school, but I did my best to sometimes be a not-so-good kid, including making merciless fun of my bad teachers, sometimes out loud, asking questions about test questions that either made no sense or were just idiotic, and otherwise being the questioning pain in the ass I'm proud to be. A-Rod was redeemed in my eyes briefly with the Stray-Rod "scandal," and gains minor points with me for playing in underground poker clubs, behavior ill-fitting a Yankee that he has cut out since. Still, he's the good kid. The suck-up. The guy who, if Joe said take out the trash, would take out the trash. (I made a sketch out of the quote where A-Rod really mentioned taking out the trash. Dude, isn't that Miguel Cairo's job?) If you didn't hate that kid, you were that kid. And ultimately, no one likes Tracy Flick unless they're boning her.



The Red Sox have no place for Tracy Flick, or no need for her, anyway. We're the team that gave Kevin Millar's goofy ass a place to goof out and cowboy up. We love it when Manny's being Manny if it doesn't cost us the game. The Red Sox are David Ortiz's massive personality and bulk, Nomar Garciaparra's neurotic/obsessive compulsive routine, "solid" third baseman Bill Mueller fucking around and winning a batting title out of the 9 hole, Jason Varitek's Thurman Munson act (now with 55% less asshole!), and Hideki Okajima's weird little necklace rattling as he falls off the mound, part of his normal delivery. Alex Rodriguez belongs in pinstriped uniforms and pinstriped suits; some Sox players may very well go out to dinner dressed like Ricky "Wild Thing" Vaughn in the restaurant scene from Major League. Don't get me wrong: Edgar Renteria and J.D. Drew are both signs that there is no consistent Sox personality in the free agent signings, although one signing worked out as a total fiasco, while the other remains to be seen.



So Larry, Theo, please, don't don't do it, b-b-baby. Is it for the betterment of the team you do not? Not necessarily: we're talking about the best position player in the league right now. But you could also resign Mike Lowell for reasonable money/years, or get a first baseman and move Youk back to 3rd, or, or, or. You've got options beyond giving Scott Boras part ownership of the Sox, options better than leaving the Nation baffled and unsure what to do when #13 steps to the plate. Just don't. Don't. Don't:

@#*! you, Cynthia Rodriguez.

Yeah, I said it. Fuck you, Cynthia Rodriguez, wife of Alex. Reasons:

1) Looking good and letting A-Rod bang cheap-looking wannabe Playmate meat. I've gone over this before: either A-Rod is a big dick or there's something going on in that relationship we don't know or want to know.

1a) It's fun to make fun of the victim.

1b) It's funny because I don't know her.

2) Living in the clean and decent city of New York, never have I heard such language. We are a people of law, good public services, and decency. Won't someone please think of the children?

3) Angry celebrities (angry at celebrity itself?) don't turn out well.

4) Derek Jeter's girlfriends no longer have sleepovers with her.

5) She shoulda worn this shirt instead:


(Retail price [Times Square]: $6, two for $10.)

No Context Necessary #3a (Game 1/3)