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Hey, how about those Blue Jays! Just when you were all ready to give up...


Well, I gave up. I confess it freely. So imagine my surprise when I brought GameDay back up in the bottom of the eighth.

And let's have a rousing cheer for a member of the Beleaguered Bullpen Crew. Jason Frasor faced five batters and got them all, three by strikeout. Well done, son. Now do it again.





Let me tell you what I was doing. I was loading page after page from the invaluable baseball-reference.com, sorting numbers in spreadsheets, and growing deeply alarmed by the greatness of Alex Rodriguez.

A-Rod was 29 last season, and as I documented yesterday, only one man in major league history had scored more runs than Alex Rodriguez by the age of 29. That would be the great Mel Ott, who made his debut with the Giants when he was 17 years old. By the time he was 29, Ott has scored 1247 runs. Rodriguez and Mickey Mantle had 1245 at the same age.

That's not all. Rodriguez had 1901 hits at the end of last season. The only players with more at this stage of their careers were Ty Cobb, Mel Ott, and Rogers Hornsby. Rodriguez had driven in 1226 runs. That's not as many RBIs as Jimmie Foxx and Mel Ott had by the time they were 29, but it's more than anybody else has.

By the end of last season, Rodriguez had hit 429 homers, and racked up 3576 total bases. Which is more than anybody.

What he has accomplished in the game, what he promises to accomplish still, is simply breathtaking.

And nobody likes him.

Not even Yankees fans, although they're certainly glad to have him on their side, and they did argue with a single voice that Rodriguez deserved last year's MVP over the Boston DH. But they certainly don't love Rodriguez the way they love Derek Jeter. Jeter is a truly great player, a no-doubt-whatsoever Hall-of-Famer - but Jeter is to Rodriguez roughly what Dave Winfield is to Babe Ruth. It's not just the championships, either. I think Yankees fans like Jason Giambi more than they like Rodriguez.

Why is this, anyway? How did this weird relationship between one of the game's greatest stars and the baseball public take shape?

It's not at all like the Barry Bonds saga. Bonds was always an arrogant, abrasive prick - but probably the main factor is that Bonds has always had an enormous chip on his shoulder. He had it before he had played in a single major league game. A lot of it has to do with how the game treated his father, and a lot of it has to do with race. An awful lot of what Barry Bonds has done in the game has been a kind of payback. He's been settling scores, real and imaginary, from day one.

There have always been great players before who did not catch the public's fancy - generally because they were clearly and unapolegetically unpleasant people. Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, Albert Belle. But Rodriguez hardly seems to be one of those guys.

Some of it might be the money, the enormous contract he signed with the Rangers. Ever since players started getting paid, we've heard that the next big contract would simply be too much for the baseball public to deal with. There was a bit of this kind of reaction when Catfish Hunter signed his deal with the Yankees in 1975, for a mind-boggling $3.5 million dollars over five years. But the Hunter situation was unique. He had been ruled a free agent because of a breach of contract, and people ended up reacting as if Catfish, who was always an extremely popular and likeable figure, had won the lottery. No one really minded - people felt happy for him.

The Reggie Jackson situation was a little different. Jim Hunter was a good old boy from Carolina, the kind of player that America had been producing as long as the game had been around. Reginald Martinez Jackson was a brash, articulate, outspoken black man, very much a product of modern America. He thought very well of himself, and said so. He quarrelled with his new manager. Soon you could not see his name in print without some such qualifying phrase as "the millionaire slugger." But Jackson himself overcame it, and justified it all - the salary, the controversy, everything - with his magnificent performances in the 1977 and 1978 post-season. He literally transcended the entire money issue. He was so good when the games were so big... that it simply didn't matter. Whatever he was being paid.

A few years later, however, Dave Winfield signed with the Yankees for the unimaginable sum of $15 million over ten years. Well, our heads just about exploded. Early on, we would go to games and talk about how much money Winfield had made while he was trotting from the dugout to the outfield. But what happened was.. well, I think we just got used to it. Winfield played with hustle and dash, and played very well (with the exception of the 1981 World Series, of course.) His money seemed insane, but we got used to it and within a few years lots of other players were making similar money. Winfield's contract was a novelty that wore off.

But no one else has signed a contract like Alex Rodriguez. This isn't baseball money. This is starting to approach the kind of money Formula One drivers and elite prizefighters command - you know, guys who could conceivably die while competing. (In fact, it's practically David Beckham money! Soccer player money!) So maybe that's part of the problem. And while Rodriguez played brilliantly for the Rangers, the team went nowhere. Eventually, he forced them to trade him and the team got better as soon as he was gone. And, like Hunter and Jackson and Winfield before him, he ended up with the Yankees.

But that's not enough. There's something else going on and I don't know what it is. The baseball public has never - never - warmed to Rodriguez. Ultimately, I think it's because he has somehow done his best to evade the burden of being the best player on earth. Ted Williams never did that. He spit at people, he didn't always hustle, he nursed personal grudges and vendettas for decades - but he always embraced the duty of being Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.

Rodriguez doesn't seem to want to wear that crown. Which is not going to work. There's simply no getting away from it. He is the best baseball player in the world. Whether he's comfortable with it or not..

Well, maybe we'll all take a shine to him when he's on the verge of kicking Barry Bonds out of the top spot for career homers. That might do the trick...


TDIB Saturday: The Strange Case of Alex Rodriguez | 26 comments | Create New Account
The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
js_magloire - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 12:23 AM EDT (#148625) #
I think it's because A-Rod is narcissitic and arrogant that people don't like him. He's not as much as a jerk as Barry Bonds, but that pretty boy image, as well as getting overpaid (yes, even for him, I don't think he's worth that kind of cash), has added up to a general indifference to him. I don't think people dislike him, but they do not enjoy him the same way that everybody loves Albert Pujols....the other greatest baseball player in the world so far.
Ron - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 12:43 AM EDT (#148626) #
At one time, the baseball public really liked A-Rod. That time was the years he played for the Mariners. Once he signed his monster contract, people turned on him and thought he was greedy. One thing I'll never understood in sports is why fans hate players because of the money they make. Heck if I was in A-Rod's position, I also would have signed Tom Hicks offer.

Watch the Yankees win the World Series this year with A-Rod hitting the game winning HR in the bottom of the 9th and you'll be hard pressed to find the A-Rod bashers in New York.

A-Rod has a totally clean image and in some strange way, I think this works against him in the eyes of some folks. Outside of not having a ring, he has it all. He's good looking, makes a lot of money, friendly, and is on his way of becoming one of the greatest baseball players in history.

I know a lot of people say A-Rod isn't clutch but I would love to see him in a Jays uni.



AWeb - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 12:53 AM EDT (#148627) #
I'd say that Rodriguez just doesn't do anything that people especially remember. He hits a lot of homeruns, but they don't go an incredible distance like McGwire's did back when he made a daily visit to the upper deck. When they do, no one notices, because the stadium he's in doesn't have a good reference point for him. The empty space in center and left-center makes the HRs look less impressive. His swing is very functional, but certainly not memorably beautiful. He plays good defense, but not generally is a spectacular playmaker (reminds me of Cal Ripken). He spent the first few incredible years of his career overshadowed by Griffey and Edgar, widely loved players who were arguably better hitters at that point anyway. And now he's overshadowed by Jeter, who showed who the boss was when he stayed as short even though it hurts the team.

The article made me think, what would the signature A-Rod moment or play be? And really, at this point I'd have to say the infamous slap, which made it into it's own thread here at BBox. Everything else just sort of blends together into a bland beige of greatness.
Mike Green - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 11:04 AM EDT (#148644) #
He's not the best baseball player in the world.  That title belongs to Albert Pujols, right now.

Here are Alex Rodriguez' BR comparables. He's a great hitter, but at this point pretty comparable to Eddie Mathews and of no more defensive value.  As you can see, he's nowhere near the hitter that Rogers Hornsby was.  What is most notable about Alex Rodriguez among the greats is his durability.  He started at age 19, and from age 25-29, he played 162, 162, 161, 155 and 162 games without losing any of his effectiveness.   The benchmark for durability and effectiveness at third base is Mike Schmidt, who was much loved throughout baseball.  A-Rod seems extremely likely to surpass Schmidt's marks (provided he takes a day off a month) within the next 5 years, and as he does so, I expect that he will be recognized for the great player he is.  Being durable and effective as one ages tends to make one more likable.
Mike Green - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 11:08 AM EDT (#148645) #
Around the majors last night, old friend Michael Rouse was called up by the A's and started at second as they faced the Yankees and Randy Johnson.  Rouse went 3-3 with a walk.
3RunHomer - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 12:42 PM EDT (#148648) #
If you don't live in New York: You hate ARod because he's a Yankee.

If you live in New York: You don't like ARod because he's the best player on the team and it hasn't won it all since he got there. Fans do tend to blame the best player on the team when things aren't going well.
Ski - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 02:54 PM EDT (#148655) #

Fans do tend to blame the best player on the team when things aren't going well.

Perhaps.....but were we really that hard on Captain Carlos when the Jays weren't winning a few years back?

Rob - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 03:10 PM EDT (#148656) #
Perhaps.....but were we really that hard on Captain Carlos when the Jays weren't winning a few years back?

You're kidding, right?

"Delgado doesn't hustle."
"Delgado never stretches for a ball in the dirt."
"Delgado isn't a good leader."
"Delgado puts up all his stats when they don't matter."
"Delgado wouldn't let the Jays trade him for prospects."

The best player always gets the most crap from the fans. Last year, it was Wells and that damned Tejada play that everyone talked about for months, ignoring the Angel Berroa play which was the complete opposite.
robertdudek - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 04:30 PM EDT (#148658) #
A-Rod is overpaid in the same way that all major league ballplayers are overpaid. That is, they are paid much more than the average citizen, "merely" for entertaining people. Some people will always view highly-paid entertainers as inherently overpaid; I am not among them.

But in relation to other players, A-Rod is worth what he is paid. He's the best player in baseball and thus his worth is derived from the value a team places on winning baseball games. Since Mr. Steinbrenner places a great of value on winning baseball games, and the Yankees have, in practical terms, an unlimited amount of money, the only kind of Yankee that is overpaid is one that doesn't perform well. Viewed in this light, A-Rod could conceivable sign a contract today for double what he makes and still not be overpaid.


robertdudek - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 04:37 PM EDT (#148659) #
Yes, all that was said about Carlos at various times. But he was most definitely loved as few Blue Jays have been since 1993. There was a palpable sense within the fan base that the Jays should retain Carlos with a long-term deal as a measure of what he had meant to the franchise, not necessarily because his production was worth what it would have taken to re-sign him.

 I am still saddened that he is no longer a Jay.



Ron - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 07:06 PM EDT (#148663) #
Chacin will be out 4-6 weeks. He has the same injury as Burnett.

I'm starting to question the way the Jays brass handles their pitchers. Doc missed a start after he revealed he pitched through some pain during Spring Training. AJ came back and got injured in his 2nd start. And now Chacin gets injured again. Perhaps this is a combination of bad management and just plain bad luck.

I expect to see Towers come back up.


jsut - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 07:24 PM EDT (#148664) #
I spoke with Chacin briefly walking down Front street after today's game.  He said we was out for 6 weeks. His elbow was all wrapped up in something as well.
smcs - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 10:24 PM EDT (#148665) #
I don't think it is a case of bad management with Chacin.  What  happened after Chacin got pulled from the game?  Gibby started yelling at him.  This tells me that Chacin was trying to play through the pain, and then finally just had enough or Gibby or Arnsberg or Zaun noticed that he was in pain and confronted him about it.
js_magloire - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 10:35 PM EDT (#148666) #
Well now is probably the best time for the Jays to be going on only 2 of their original starters, because the schedule is probably the softest from now until the all-star break in terms of the whole season. The Mets are pretty good, but other than that, most teams are at best only a couple games over .500. Hopefully AJ returns soon, so its back to 3 of the original 5 in the rotation, unless Towers all of a sudden shows the numbers he's putting up in AAA. Is this likely?
andrewkw - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 11:27 PM EDT (#148668) #
anyone want to come to the game tomorrow?  My friend has to work and I have an extra ticket, I need someone to help me hang the write in rios.com banner as it takes 2 people to hang it.  My tickets are in 116 as I originally played to go to this game before the whole writeinrios.com however I still plan on hanging the banner in 104.  If you're already going and will be there around 12ish and don't mind taking 15mins or so to help me hang it email me.  thanks
smcs - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 11:34 PM EDT (#148669) #
By the way, there was a beautiful shot of the banner on Friday night when Rios pinch-hit in the glorious 8th inning.
dan gordon - Saturday, June 10 2006 @ 11:57 PM EDT (#148671) #
Wilner said today that he thinks Towers is likely to be called up in time for the start in Wednesday's game, which would have been Chacin's next start.  I would imagine Tallet would be sent down to make room for him.
katman - Friday, November 02 2007 @ 01:13 PM EDT (#175745) #
I don't think it's the money, really. And you're right that the guy isn't abrasive or otherwise intrinsically unlikeable.

A-Rod's problem is that the fans don't see a burning desire to win in him.
  • They see him as someone who was quite willing to settle for a mediocre team and make $25 million in a contract that obviously makes the whole team unworkable from the get-go, rather than making $18 million with a potential winner and still being way set for life.
  • When he moves, he moves to the Yankees - and they do not win, and his personality is such that he isn't visibly upset by that.
  • His team mates, wherever he is, don't seem to rally around him or defend him - and folks wonder why.
  • As soon as possible, he opts out of the contract, at a pretty inconvenient time to say the least, thus showing where he'll really go out of his way - and it isn't on the playing field.
This is the cumulative weight of "ding" ding" ding" judgments that say: "Money is the only thing this guy's about, not winning, and not the team." That may be fair, or it may be unfair. But it is not by any means an unreasonable judgment, given the public evidence at hand.

If the guy hustled like Reed Johnson and was seen on TV crying after his team was eliminated from the playoffs, he could make $30 million and no-one would care. If his team-mates rallied around him and said "look, you have this guy all wrong, he's his own guy and he isn't wired the same way, but we accept that and love him" ("Manny being Manny," anyone?), then you'd see folks warm to him over time.

Maybe he does care. Maybe he cares too much, and that's behind his mediocre/choke playoff record. Or maybe he's just unlucky in a small sample set. Who knows? Maybe his team mates think the guy is awesome.

But of a baseball player cares deeply about winning and is loved by his team mates, and no-one sees it, does it make a reputation?
TDIB Saturday: The Strange Case of Alex Rodriguez | 26 comments | Create New Account
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