KANSAS CITY – There are 20 games to go now in what Alex Rodriguez has taken to call his “magical season.” Twenty games to go for A-Rod, who attained the magical 50 milestone on the first of his two home runs here last night, to get to 60 or 61.
No one believes Barry Bonds reached 73 honestly any more than the public believes Mark McGwire hit 70 on his own. And now, with the issue of performing-enhancing drugs hovering over baseball once again, Rodriguez has positioned himself to take a run at what in hindsight and with the benefit of education can be regarded as the majors’ legitimate home-run record – Roger Maris’ 61 in ’61.
This is The Natural mounting a charge at the natural home-run record.
Turn around when Rodriguez comes to the plate and you’ll likely miss a slice of history. Two more last night, one to dead center in the fourth, one into the Yankees’ left-field bullpen in sixth. The first one gave the Yankees a 4-0 lead, the second a 5-2 advantage.
He hit the second one – the 51st, his fifth in three games and eighth in the last 10 – leading off the sixth. Nine batters later, Rodriguez was up again with the Yankees having batted around on their way to an 11-5 victory. On Wednesday, you’ll recall, Rodriguez had walked on the Harlem River on his way back to the Stadium from an ankle MRI at Columbia-Presbyterian before slugging two home runs in the seventh inning against the Mariners.
Expecting him to do it again was like expecting Tiger Woods to record a hole in one on the 18th in consecutive rounds. And yet, when A-Rod stepped in, not only did the illogical seem logical, it seemed probable. What happened? He missed by merely a yard or two by sending an arching drive to the warning .
“Right now being at the plate is a pretty comfortable spot to be in,” he said. “You want to be in there 10 times a game.”
Baseball players aren’t snitches. They don’t spy on their neighbors. They don’t report sightings of suspicious packages to the authorities. They subscribe to an innocent-until-proven-guilty belief system that would make the founders of the ACLU blush.
It has long been my theory that the reason baseball’s “good guys” are so reluctant to take on Bonds is because they either know or suspect one-time teammates used steroids. It is more likely than not that every team benefited to varying degrees by having users.
Chipper Jones’ comments about Rodriguez having to answer questions aside, there is no skepticism surrounding Rodriguez’s feats. Never has been and is not now. There is, rather, Shock and Awe at the damage he’s done this season with a baseball bat.
These are the all-time Bronx Bombers: Maris with 61. Babe Ruth with 60, 59, and 54, twice. Mickey Mantle with 54 and 52. Now Rodriguez with 51 after previously hitting 57 and 52 when he was with the Rangers. Now Rodriguez, the first Yankee to hit 50 since the M&M Boys in ’61.
Now Rodriguez with the record for homers in a season by a shortstop and the record for homers in a season by a third baseman.
“Very humbling,” he said. “In Texas, it was a different scenario. In New York, it’s special.”
His first three years in New York, Rodriguez seemed as much a New Yorker as someone who’d ask directions to the “42nd Street Bridge.” Now, he’s one of us, even as he has mounted a pedestal, even as he has become the most compelling act in baseball.
“Some guys it may take only a year or two to get comfortable,” Rodriguez said. “It’s taken me four full years.”
There are 20 games to go and Rodriguez has 51 home runs. He is 10 shy of Maris, 10 shy of the 61 in ’61.
Forty-six years later, The Natural is taking aim at the natural home-run record.