Every day brings us at least one “Only A-Rod!” moment, and often more than that. The bar is set so high, it takes something truly wacky and sock-knocking to even register on the A-Richter Scale.
Count Tuesday as an especially ludicrous one in The A-Rod Chronicles.
Who besides Alex Rodriguez would draw (or perhaps pay for?) a barricaded crowd of as many as 70 people to holler in support of him outside Major League Baseball’s Manhattan headquarters, as he appealed his 211-game suspension for illegal performance-enhancing drug usage and obstruction?
Even better, in who else’s universe but A-Rod’s would the chief hollerer, Hispanics Across America president Fernando Mateo, get hospitalized — the result of a coffee-spilling tussle with an MLB security guard — before the guest of honor even arrived on the scene?
Phenomenal. A-Rod had us at hello.
But he had better have his act together more than his supporters, whom he greeted and thanked in Spanish upon arriving at 9:30 in the morning and then again as he departed at 6:11 p.m..
“We’re not here to tell you that Alex Rodriguez is guilty. We’re not here to tell you that Alex Rodriguez is innocent,” Sergio Rodriguez, HAA’s executive director, said as he pinch hit for the absent Mateo. “All we are saying is ‘Treat him fairly.’ ”
That offended The Post’s intellect. What’s more fair, I asked Rodriguez (who isn’t related to A-Rod) than a collectively bargained process which affords the accused the opportunity to appeal his case in front of an independent arbitrator (Fredric Horowitz)?
Sergio Rodriguez, who turned out to be eminently likeable, probably shouldn’t teach a course in baseball labor law. He noted MLB fired the last independent arbitrator, Shyam Das, after Das ruled in Ryan
Braun’s favor last year. Yet he didn’t grasp the Basic Agreement allows both MLB and the Players Association to dismiss an arbitrator at any time.
Rodriguez also floated another talking point, saying of A-Rod, “If he is found guilty, give him the 50-game suspension like every first-time offender. Don’t have him [suspended] [211] games because you want to build a legacy off the biggest superstar in the game.”
Well, it is fair to wonder whether Bud Selig has made this too personal with A-Rod, and for sure, the retiring commissioner cares deeply about his legacy. However, the game’s Joint Drug Agreement gives
MLB latitude in punishing cases of non-analytical positives, when a player is caught through means other than a positive drug test.
A final, hilarious criticism of the commissioner: “Since the early ’90s, Bud Selig has been a steroid lover. He has profited from them. Major League Baseball has profited.”
There was much profit, yes, yet he isn’t allowed to evolve on the issue? And for someone painted as a “steroid lover,” Selig is sort of scrawny. Maybe he isn’t using them right.
This all qualified as small potatoes compared to the targeting of Yankees president Randy Levine, who has been on A-Rod’s radar for a while now. The supporters/protesters held many signs, written mostly by a similar hand, reading slogans like “Latinos Stick Together” and “No Justice No Peace.” And then there was this one: “Randy Levine is the Devil.”
Asked how he could justify such a blistering criticism, Sergio Rodriguez said, “We feel that Randy Levine and the New York Yankees have a lot to gain by Alex Rodriguez’s suspension. … We feel that
Randy Levine is working with Bud Selig to do this.”
That prompted a natural follow-up: What evidence did Rodriguez have to support his contention?
“Just speculation,” he said. “But we feel that way. The proof is in the pudding. Look at the punishment, the arbitrator.”
Check, please!
Because Rodriguez echoed many of the arguments previously conveyed by A-Rod and his attorney Joseph Tacopina, it was natural to wonder how much credit Team A-Rod should take for this — and whether the third baseman was personally paying them to attend. Sergio Rodriguez denied that was the case.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If I were rich enough, I’d pay for a group of cheerleaders to accompany me everywhere.
Mateo is supposed to show up here on Wednesday, assuming he has healed sufficiently from SpilledCoffeegate. So there should be more theatrics, more questionable and ill-informed accusations.
As long as A-Rod is thanking his admirers, though, he could ask them to step up their game, too.