The man who spit in the face of October pressure believes Alex Rodriguez won’t be smothered by it for the third straight postseason.
“I think he will do super well,” Reggie Jackson said yesterday when asked how Rodriguez would perform against the Indians in the ALDS that opens tomorrow night in Cleveland against the AL Central champs. “Look at the year he had. You can’t have a better year than he had. Who was the last guy to roll into the postseason with the kind of year he had this year?”
Jackson knows what makes Rodriguez tick; understands that despite the MVP season, there are people waiting to empty their lungs with boos for the one guy who the spotlight will be on from beginning to end.
“They booed him from the start this year,” said Jackson, who will be with the Yankees for today’s workout at Jacobs Field.
Loudly booed when he dropped a foul pop in the first inning on Opening Day, Rodriguez turned the boos to a summer full of cheers, and chants of “MVP, MVP” and finished with 54 homers, 156 RBIs and a .314 average. Now, that success is something Jackson believes Rodriguez is going to lean on.
“He got off to a great start and never stopped,” Jackson said. “And it wasn’t all smooth. He couldn’t have gone through anything tougher than what happened to him in Toronto and the family situation. It wasn’t like he got a free pass.”
Is Rodriguez’s regular season enough for him to bounce back from an 0-for-4 effort in a Game 1 defeat? Remember in 2005, Rodriguez was coming off a year in which he would be voted the MVP and soiled the bed in the ALDS against the Angels when he batted .133 (2-for-15) and set the record for the most inhales and exhales at the plate. The deeper the breath, the worse the at-bat.
Rodriguez promised in March this year was going to be different, and it was. Instead of his life being an open book, what he said was measured and rarely in depth. Now, on the verge of his fourth – and possibly last – postseason as a Yankee, Rodriguez is poised to wash away the stench of 2005 and 2006 (1-for-14; .071 against the Tigers).
“I am focused on 2007,” Rodriguez said following a brief workout at Yankee Stadium. “It’s a whole new year. I am taking one pitch at a time.”
Since Indians starter C.C. Sabathia is murder on lefties – they hit .203 (41-for-202) against him – a larger responsibility falls on Derek Jeter and Rodriguez, who are a combined 19-for-39 (.487) against the lefty they haven’t seen since Sept. 1, 2004.
And you know who will get the blame if Jeter and Rodriguez don’t hit Sabathia and the Yankees lose, right? It won’t be Jeter.
“When you come to New York you get invited to the dance every year,” Rodriguez said. “You keep getting chances.”
With the right to opt out of the final three years of his contract, this could be Rodriguez’s final chance to win a World Series in pinstripes. It’s a chance Jackson believes Rodriguez will finally cash in on.
“He has got to be digging himself,” Jackson said. “If that was me, I would be digging myself once a day. The year he had was unbelievable.”
Now we will see how it ends. Will it be a springboard or an albatross? The guy who had put Mr. in front of October is betting on the former.