MINNEAPOLIS – He didn’t come to town spewing the same self-aggrandizing pronouncements, never called himself “the straw that stirs the drink,” never thirsted for the 24/7 attention that his spiritual forebear did.
No, the only way Alex Rodriguez ever wanted himself compared to Reggie Jackson was by winning as many World Series rings as Jackson did. The only times he wanted his name in the same sentence were when those sentences said something to the effect of, “Alex Rodriguez, making his own case to become his generation’s Mr. October . . .”
“All I want,” he’d said, on that glorious February day a year and a half ago when he became a Yankee, “is to be known as a winner. And this is the place where you come when you want to be known as a winner.”
The Yankees won a lot of games last year, but never made the World Series. They’ve won a few games this year, but they’d lost exactly as many entering last night’s game with the Twins at the Metrodome. And the more stuff like that piles up, the more it’s going to cling to A-Rod. The more the Yankees struggle to keep their head above sea level, the more people are going to tilt their heads in wonder when looking at the Yankees’ best player.
Fairly or unfairly. For better or for worse.
“Comes with the territory,” Rodriguez said.
The unsettling thing about A-Rod’s standing on this team, though, is the increasing way he’s coming to be looked at, which resembles, if not duplicates, the way Jackson was treated during his earliest hours as a Yankee – an island of storms in the middle of the most famous clubhouse in sports.
There’s a wonderful book out called, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning,” in which author Jonathan Mahler recounts the way the 1977 Yankees adjusted to the sudden appearance of Jackson in their midst. Some of the ensuing problems were Jackson’s fault – notably the interview he granted with Sport magazine’s Robert Ward in which he uttered his fateful “straw” comment – and some of them were the simple jealousies of rich men forced to encounter every day an even richer man.
The theater was wonderful. The sniping was less than elegant.
Nothing quite so overt has happened yet with these Yankees, but this is a different time. Players as a rule are brought up to be bland, so it’s never going to reach the epic proportions of the glorious Bronx Zoo. Still, there was the uncomfortable week in spring training when Rodriguez was getting hammered regularly by Red Sox and no one, not one Yankee, stepped forward to defend A-Rod.
And there was Friday night in Minnesota, in the bottom of the seventh inning, when the tensions between A-Rod and the rest of the Yankees received a little more of a public bath than anyone is used to. With a man on second and no one out, Mel Stottlemyre paid a visit to the mound and instructed Mike Mussina to go to third if he could on what everyone knew was a certain bunt play. A-Rod was in the meeting. Everyone knew: Mussina was going to third.
Except on the very next play, with Mussina pouncing on the ball, with Jorge Posada screaming and pointing at Mussina to go to third – as per Stottlemyre’s orders – Rodriguez was screaming at Posada to go to first. He was well off the bag. There was no play. Another run would eventually score.
And afterward, no one tried to dive on the grenade.
“Mel told everyone to go to third,” Joe Torre said, at least four different times. “Alex found himself in no-man’s land.”
“Alex didn’t charge,” Mussina said. “And he didn’t retreat. He was kind of in the middle.”
Rodriguez himself sheepishly admitted, “Maybe I should have stayed home.”
Maybe.
Again, it’s only a glimpse, only a peek, only a brief look inside what surely happens around the Yankees every day. But it’s revealing in its way. And as the Yankees continue to slide, you can expect more and more of those revelations. The straw that stirs the drink always draws more attention, after all.
