TORONTO — Alex Rodriguez’s name has been so associated with scandals, PED use and suspensions in recent months that one almost forgets his prominent place in baseball’s record book.
The Yankees third baseman achieved another milestone last night when he hit his 650th career home run, a fifth inning solo shot off Blue Jays starter R.A. Dickey that temporarily tied the score in what finished as a 5-2 Yankees loss.
Rodriguez is only the fifth player in baseball history to reach the 650-homer plateau. He is just 10 homers shy of tying Willie Mays for fourth on the all-time list.
Rodriguez’s contact stipulates a $6 million bonus should he tie Mays’ mark, as well as similar $6 million bonuses for reaching the career totals of other legends — Babe Ruth’s 714, Henry Aaron’s 755 and Barry Bonds’ 762 — and if he should he establish a new all-time record.
Rodriguez had mostly hit from the fourth or fifth spot in the order since returning on Aug. 5, but manager Joe Girardi dropped him to the sixth spot last night for strategic purposes.
Rodriguez was hitting behind Curtis Granderson and in front of Lyle Overbay and Ichiro Suzuki, giving the Yankees right-handed hitting balance within a spate of left-handed bats.
“[It’s] just to split the lefties since otherwise you’d stack three in a row and I didn’t want to do that,” Girardi said. “Now I have some options.”
It was just the third time in Rodriguez’s 20-year career he has hit from the sixth spot in the regular season. He was notoriously dropped to the sixth spot in the lineup for two games during last year’s ALCS, when he hit just .120 during the 2012 postseason.
Rodriguez went 1-for-4 in the game with his first three at-bats coming against Dickey, who Rodriguez has hit hard over his career. Rodriguez is now hitting .421 (8-for-19) against the knuckleballerwith his home run marking the first time he has taken Dickey out of the park.
Dickey’s 2012 memoir poked some fun at Rodriguez, most notably in a story detailing how Rodriguez allegedly took credit for Dickey’s first complete game shutout, telling the knuckleballer he was calling the pitches from shortstop for catcher Einar Diaz. When Dickey was hit hard in his following start, Rodriguez claimed he wasn’t calling those pitches.
That incident was isolated, as Dickey explained.
“He probably has a lot of anecdotes that are scribbled about him,” Dickey said. “For the most part, my experience with him was really pleasant.”Because I was a rookie at the time, I was down the totem pole quite a bit so we didn’t have a ton of interaction. But I always enjoyed him as a teammate.”