All summer long, New York Yankees fans were waiting for A-Rod. The anticipated return of Alex Rodriquez, their fantastically well-paid slugger, was about the only source of tension over a summer season which was over before it even began.
Everyone knew it would be one of those seasons: the Yankees were aged and locked into expensive salaries and would have to start from scratch.
Last night, the Yankees crowd were due to get their first glimpse of Rodriquez but by then it was too late. "What A-Bum" crowed the headline of the New York Daily News on Thursday, while the city's other major tabloid, the New York Post, showed a close-up photograph of Rodriquez's features with the headline: "Please Go".
In suspending Rodriquez along with 12 other major league players after a comprehensive investigation into doping emanating from the Biogenesis company in Florida, the MLB stated on Monday they were delivering the toughest penalties since those meted out to the 1919 Chicago Black Sox, eight of whose players were banned for life after being found guilty of throwing that year’s world series.
Nearly one hundred years on and Rodriquez is proclaiming he is the Shoeless Joe Jackson of the latest scandal to envelope the national pastime, proclaiming his innocence and exercising his right to appeal the MLB decision.
It means he is eligible to play for the Yankees and by a peculiar coincidence, his planned return to the Yankees line-up took place just one night after he was theoretically banned for 211 games – or to the end of the 2014 season.
And that game took place at US Cellular Field, home of the Chicago White Sox – formerly the Black Sox. Last night, Rodriquez was back in the Bronx, his childhood borough, and was expected to line out against the Detroit Tigers, the latest in America’s lengthening list of sports stars battling against disgrace.
At this point, the fans are Rodriquez's last refuge. His appeal has been partly dictated by his dark hints he has been singled out as a convenient scapegoat by MLB commissioner Bud Selig, who is on a renewed mission to "clean up" the national pastime.
Not exactly untarnished
The problem for Rodriguez is his reputation is not exactly untarnished when it comes to performance enhancing drugs. He was forced to appear on 60 Minutes with Katie Couric to deny he had taken banned substances on December 16th, 2007, just three days after Jose Canseco proclaimed his amazement that Rodriquez's name did not feature on a detailed report by Senator George Mitchell (he doesn't just reunite nations divided by hundreds of years of religious hatred and mutual mistrust).
It was a mixed Christmas for A-Rod: Canseco’s bean-spilling was problematic but on the bright side, he signed a contract extension with the Yankees for a staggering $275 million over 10 years. The Yankees top brass had decided to lock their mid-term future around Rodriquez.
By February 2009, he had more questions to answer when Sports Illustrated published a report stating the Yankees star had used synthetic testosterone in 2003. Two days later, A-Rod recalled that yes; he had engaged his cousin in procuring supplements for him between 2001 and 2003 but didn't understand what he was taking – "My cousin and I, one of us more ignorant than the other", he said.
By October, all of that had been covered in so much ticker tape as Rodriquez and the Yankees won their first world series since 2000. It wasn’t quite the deluge of titles A-Rod had promised the fans upon returning to New York to reunite with his long time friend, Derek Jeter.
Rodriquez’s intentions were good: he happily shifted from shortstop to third base in deference to the Jeter. But that 2009 championship was as good as it got: Jeter and Rodriquez failed to rekindle their friendship and A-Rod began to feature more prominently on the society gossip columns than on the back pages of the New York newspapers.
Yankees fans had to face an unpalatable truth: the future of the club was tied to an easily-distracted prince regent, careless with his gift. Yesterday, a poll in the New York Times indicated that only one in five people in the city retained a favourable opinion of the local boy. That has partly to do with his profile. Rodriquez has been playing for an extraordinarily long time, making his major league debut in 1994.
And he was adored in the beginning, touted as one of those rare prospects capable of lighting up the entire sport and he was not without his graces. Rodriquez was just 19 years old when he made his first All-Star team – "a nervous little boy" was how he later described himself.
Classy gesture
In a memorable touch, he asked Cal Ripken, then in his final season, to switch to his nominal position of shortstop. It was a small, classy gesture as Ripken had become one of the mythical figures of the sport, breaking Lou Gehrig's for most consecutive games played in 1995 (the streak ended at 2,632 unbroken games in 1998) but more so embodying the qualities – reticence and humility – which Americans cherish in their sports heroes.
Rodriquez would brush shoulders with the sepia legends too, amassing batting averages that placed him in the same company as Babe Ruth: as early as 2004 he joined Ruth and Jimmie Foxx as the only men in MLB history to hit at least 35 home runs, 100 runs and 100 RBIs (runs batted in) for seven consecutive seasons.
His 14 All-Star awards were validation of his consistency and yet the gripe about Rodriguez was that while spectacular in the regular season, he rarely distinguished himself in the pennant games.
And so last night he must have cut an apprehensive figure as he sat in the Yankee locker room. His battle to return from a hip injury has been long and defined by false returns – in June A-Rod tweeted he was ready to rejoin the Yankees roster only to have his general manager Brian Cashman publicly suggest that the star should “shut the f**** up.”
His team-mates have supported him, with the adored Mariano Rivera hoping the fans would get behind Rodriquez. “He’s a member of our family”.
It makes it easier for the Yankees fans to voice their frustration in a dud of a baseball summer for New York teams. Their moral choice would be more difficult if the Yankees were in first place in the AL and a good bet for a World Series run.
Then, having Rodriquez back in the line up might be a different proposition.
After all, it is not as though his issues with banned substances mattered much to them when they won the championship four years ago. For now, however, Rodriguez seems to be postponing disgrace.
There may be some hope: after all, the fans voted Shoeless Joe Jackson, who died in 1951, as the 12th greatest outfielder of all time and his troubled story has been immortalised in Field of Dreams, in The Natural and in museums and shrine. He remains on the MLB's ineligible list and is therefore precluded from being voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Apparently his case remains under review.
