ANAHEIM, Calif. — In only 245 days, he has risen from pariah to messiah, from reviled to revered, from a rogue whose reputation was left stranded on the side of the road to a player who makes grown men shake their heads in wonder.
Eight months and three days from one kind of press conference — where Alex Rodriguez famously admitted he knew he hadn’t been taking Tic Tacs — to another kind, where he all but had to swear that he really doesn’t have X-Ray vision, a bulletproof chest and the ability to fly.
“I’ve never had a streak like that,” Nick Swisher marveled when this 10-1 Yankees romp was done, “but the ball has to look like a beach ball to him now. There are a lot of players who have played this game. I don’t know any who did what he’s done here.”
It was simply another day at the October office for Rodriguez, another home run (his fifth of the postseason), another three hits (make that 11 in seven postseason games), another flawless day in the field.
If CC Sabathia made it clear that the Angels weren’t going to seize whatever momentum they’d gained in Game 3, it was Rodriguez who turned that momentum upside-down.
CC, A-ROD PUSH BOMBERS A WIN FROM SERIES
Every day now, he not only puts a little bit more distance between himself and the lowest moment of his public life, he puts a bit more space between himself and the pressures that used to strangle and suffocate him.
“He needs to finish,” Reggie Jackson, always the authority on October legitimacy, said, a reminder to A-Rod and to everyone else that the jackals won’t be jettisoned forever until he slips a championship ring on his finger. And that may well be so.
Still, Rodriguez has done more than anyone to nudge the Yankees to the doorstep of a 40th American League pennant. When he is hitting as he is, when Sabathia is throwing as he is, there is little else to worry about.
Wretched umpiring can’t harm them. Joe Girardi stays mostly planted on his seat in the dugout, his wheels silenced for a few hours.
Yet A-Rod understands the hole that still sits in the thick of his resume. Asked if his epic performance across this postseason will vanquish at last whatever questions remain about his autumnal fortitude, he admitted, “I’m not sure about that.”
And added, with as much candor as we’ve ever seen from him: “I will say that in other postseasons I’ve failed, and sometimes failed miserably.”
Just not this postseason, not from the moment he launched a two-run haymaker of a home run off Minnesota’s Joe Nathan in Game 2 of the Division Series, not when he drove a game-tying knife through the guts of the Angels in Game 2 of the ALCS, not at the end of Game 3 when he was given the Barry Bonds treatment, drawing an intentional walk with nobody on base.
“It’s obvious he’s brought his game onto the field what he does during the season,” said Angels manager Mike Scioscia, who is starting to look like Wile E. Coyote after each of these games, wondering if he’ll ever figure out a way to get Road Runner out in a big situation. “He’s been as clutch as anyone could have hoped for on their side.”
Someone asked Rodriguez what this felt like, and he spoke about the game slowing down for him when he plays this way, about swinging the bat well, about seeing the ball well, about being patient and passing the baton and all the rest. The truth is, he’s as new to all of this as the rest of us.
Which brings us, as it should, back to Reggie, who hit five homers in the 1977 playoffs, a mark A-Rod tied yesterday, one behind Bernie Williams’ single-season record. Mr. October spoke of the special privilege it is to watch the likes of A-Rod, of Ryan Howard, of Albert Pujols, and his advice was simple.
“You want to enjoy it,” Jackson said.
Watching the dizzying high Alex Rodriguez is riding, only 245 days after his nauseating low, how can you do anything but?