ARod had been my favorite whipping boy for quite some time. I never felt he was being “genuine”; everything seemed contrived to me*. Yet somewhere along the way, probably after his PED admissions and hip injury, he dialed down the canned, saccharine commentary and focused more on his team and less on raw stats. I’ll readily admit that even now, I still inspect ARod’s commentary closer than others, partially out of habit and partially out of a hint of doubt. Fair or unfair, I’m admitting my biases.
So in reading this today, I am quite pleased. Perhaps age has sharpened ARod’s focus, perhaps it’s being in a winning culture**, perhaps it’s his teammates. Regardless of the reason, ARod has gained some perspective:
“I’ve talked about it all along, I’ve always wanted to use 600 like first base,” said Rodriguez. “To use it as a platform or a springboard to continue to improve my game. But for me, the whole thing as I approach 600, the whole thing that I think about is the perspective of where I was when I hit 500 and how things are different now.”
“For me, early on, all I thought it was about was accumulating numbers,” Rodriguez said. “Try to his 40 or 50 and drive in 140 or 130 and hopefully make the playoffs and maybe advance, but after winning a world championship and attaining that goal you realize that it is not about that. It is about obviously winning the world championship.”
I try my best to stay away from that “True Yankee” crap. But if I had to define it, it’s a player who busts his butt for his team, is able to withstand the inherent NY pressures and embraces everything about “being a Yankee” means. It doesn’t need to be a career Yankee; I think Nick Swisher is the most recent posterboy of a guy coming to NY and simply soaking up everything and giving it all back to us, the fans. Is ARod a “True Yankee”? That’s for you to decide, but I’m a heckuvalot more accepting of him than I ever have been, and I’ve taken heat for the heat I’ve given ARod over the years (see A Fool’s Errand: Pt1, Pt2, Pt3). I’m happy to see him looking comfortable in his own skin, in pinstriped laundry.
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* Yes, Derek Jeter has made a career and his golden boy image without ever saying anything really meaningful. He’s a master at using words to say little or nothing. And he gets away with it. Who said life was fair?
** Though Seattle in his early days had a winning culture. Perhaps he needed both age and culture? Or he just needed to be knocked to the ground and grow up again?
Jason, I like your comment about a "winning culture" perhaps affecting A-Rod's outlook. I was actually just having a conversation with a co-worker (an Orioles fan in fact) last night about the ways in which a winning/losing culture can impact the development of young players. It's easy to get caught up in yourself when you're on a team that isn't winning, in order to see some amount of success. I actually had wondered if that might have had some impact on A-Rod's change in tune lately. Perhaps his perspective shifted, despite the success of Seattle early in his career, when he was on teams that were losing. Anyway, it is something that has been on my mind as of late and I found your take on A-Rod to be pretty interesting.
I don't think this is that hard really; A-Rod's always had a media target on his back, and he's always been the whipping boy. No matter what he says or does, there's always a writer ready to devote a column or blog post to ripping him for it. Hell, Wallace Matthews is still trying to make a career out of it. And when you become one of those guys, there's really no way to win. You either care about it, and become an awkward mess trying to figure out the right thing to say, or you become Barry Bonds, and get branded a jerk for not caring and treating the media like they deserve to be treated. And I think A-Rod got it doubly bad since he was always sort of the id to Jeter, who's every utterance was treated as though it was the perfect thing to say, could do nothing wrong, etc. A-Rod had to be the balance to the media's fawning over Jeter, especially after he got his contract. As I said yesterday, you never see anyone point out that only A-Rod has ever gotten a bigger contract than Jeter's in all of baseball history, in fact, in most stories about Jeter's impending free agency there's normally a clear implication that Jeter has been underpaid the past 10 years.
As for last season, I don't know if it was the PED's, the new guys in the clubhouse, getting rid of Torre, Kate Hudson, or whatever, but I think A-Rod just got to the point where he didn't care anymore. And after his first swing home run, the 15th inning walk off, playoff heroics, etc., he was more broadly embraced by Yankees fans for it.
I think the biggest factor was being outed as a steroid cheat.
My friend argued at the time that being exposed was really going to help Arod and the team, I was skeptical, but boy was he right.
Frankly I think A-Rod just decided to let everything go. Before the PED's, before the running around with the celebs, before his divorce, before his new contract, the biggest issue for A-Rod was the 250 million dollar contract that he signed with the Rangers. A lot of members in the media went after him hard for signing that contract (even though it wasn't his or the Yankees fault, the Rangers gave him the money and anyone would be an idiot not to take it and even though the Yankees have the biggest payroll in baseball that A-Rod/Ranger contract changed the game in what a player could possibly get so if anyone wants to talk about skyrocketing salaries blame the Rangers not the Yanks but I digress) and they have been on him ever since. It doesn't help that you come to New York where the media spotlight is a hundred times brighter than Texas and during your time here in NY all of your dirty laundry gets aired out but it is what it is. A-Rod's first issue was his need to please everybody, the media, the fans, his family, his hangers-on etc. When he made the decision that all he had to do is please himself he was able to let go of a lot of baggage. His second issue was obsessing over his stats and understanding that good stats doesn't necessarily put you in the HOF. What guarantees that is rings. He knows now that with at least one ring WITH his stats give him a legitimate shot but multiple rings assures him a spot. Frankly I think the big four (Jeter, Sado, Andy, & Mo) was the biggest factor in his turn around and attitude. A-Rod doesn't have to be the leader of this team (unlike when he was with the Rangers, let's face it A-Rod isn't a leader and like LeBron, needs others to help him) which reduces his responsibilities on the team. He is not the voice of the team thus reducing his media time so he can actually concentrate on baseball and becoming a better player. His is on a team that year in, year out has a legitimate shot at winning it all that alone can hone one's concentration and help step one's game up. A-Rod's finally understanding what it takes to be a Yankee and after last year's championship knows that bringing home multiple championships is what makes you a "true" Yankee.
"His second issue was obsessing over his stats"
Sooner or later I'm going to stab someone for saying this.
“His second issue was obsessing over his stats”
Sooner or later I’m going to stab someone for saying this.
Why? It was the truth. Key word "was"
Arod finally realized that if he would just shut up and play and do his thing, the stats would take care of themselves and he'd earn more respect from the fans.
Give him credit for figuring it out sooner rather than later.
Because it makes absolutely no sense, and bears no relationship to the game of baseball whatsoever. I mean, what else are you going to use? It's not football, where a defensive lineman may not get many tackles, but can absorb blockers and free up a teammate. Baseball is a team game built upon a series of individual contests. There's no passing the ball to someone else. When you're at bat, you're at bat.
As I always ask, what exactly would you have A-Rod do differently at the plate to "help the team?" Hit fewer home runs? Drive in fewer runs? Have an OPS 100 points lower? Bunt? Seriously, what?
As I always ask, what exactly would you have A-Rod do differently at the plate to “help the team?”
It's not what he does, it's the mentality of how he does it.
Arod's individual goal of becoming the best baseball player ever was shattered with the steroids revelation, he can't even be as good as Bonds. So now it's just about doing the best he can, keeping his mouth shut, and helping be a part of a championship team.
It's more of a "feel" thing, which is probably why it doesn't make sense to some people.
"It’s not what he does, it’s the mentality of how he does it."
I rest my case.
My thoughts on the psychological evolution of A-Rod himself are in the comment at 6/25/2010 9:14 am on this post: http://itsaboutthemoney.net/archives/2010/06/25/t… I won't bother repeating those comments here, since this topic is about how others (fans and media) treat him.
Brien with an e is correct. It's fair to criticize A-Rod for his occasional bush-league plays and tone-deaf behavior (which range from the Dallas-Braden-bizarre to the Bronson-Arroyo-indefensible), but that's where the fairness of the media's treatment of A-Rod ends. And when I hear Yankees fans disparaging the man's value in the years before he "earned his pinstripes," I'm reminded of why I sometimes can't deal with a certain subset of my fellow Bombers supporters (hint: I'm referring to the subset that Yankees haters enjoy painting as the entire set, an approach the subset makes a very inviting prospect indeed).
Come on, people. Between the lines, Alex Rodriguez is easily the best American League player of his generation, and to suggest that somehow he wasn't helping the team before but has just now suddenly become a huge asset is just nonsense. We have the best player in the league, and half of us treat him like a Porsche with a few dings in it at the same time most of the people in the neighborhood are driving Kias.
We were lucky to have him in 2009, but we were also lucky to have him when he first came here in 2004. Oh, that year happened to end with the worst experience any Yankees fan has ever been through, an experience that had many of us walking around for months like zombies? Surely that happened because A-Rod wasn't all he was cracked up to be.
I have never had the slightest doubt that if we'd won Game 4, or Game 5, possibly Game 6, or at the very least Game 7, of the 2004 ALCS, the A-Rod hate would never have gotten nearly the legs that it did because of the random fact, so barely subject to his control, that the Yankees didn't get to the World Series during his first five whole years in the Bronx. When the Yankees change anything, it is retroactively deemed a success or a failure by THOSE Yankees Fans ("TYF") based on the outcome of that season's postseason.
Derek Jeter had the good fortune to be drafted by the team he always wanted to play for and for that team to be one that could afford to pay him what he deserved. I love the guy like all of you do, but if try to tell me he hasn't had a charmed life, get real. The circumstances of A-Rod's arrival in the Bronx — big existing contract, high expectations for him, high immediate expectations for the team — were perfectly tailored to start all sorts of inane narratives, and start they did.
A-Rod is a first-ballot Hall of Famer because he is beyond amazing at hitting baseballs. The conversation begins and ends right there.
“It’s not what he does, it’s the mentality of how he does it.”
I rest my case.
Didn't you yourself say that he just stopped caring anymore (about the peripheral stuff)
That's what mentality means, how much you care about certain things, at least that's how I define it.
The weird thing is we seem to agree on this issue, I guess we just have different ways of expressing it.
I think if you asked 90% of all reasonably intelligent yankee fans, more than any other single factor, they would point to the steroid revelation as the moment Arod turned the corner.
The circumstances of A-Rod’s arrival in the Bronx — big existing contract, high expectations for him, high immediate expectations for the team — were perfectly tailored to start all sorts of inane narratives, and start they did.
Matt, excellent post, but you're still ignoring the elephant in the room, steroids.
Long before the failed test came out, many people around the game knew Arod was cheating. His Texas teammates knew, Jeter knew, people from the Miami florida people who were around Arod in high school knew. It makes the "afraud" nickname, in hindsight, make much more sense.
I agree that much of the criticism Arod has absorbed was stupid, but let's not gloss over the fact that the man was cheating and lying about it.