DETROIT —We can’t always predict a permanent change in the conversation, a nudging of the narrative, even though we think we can.
For years, everyone told Pete Rose: Confess. Come clean. Scour your soul, tell us what we already know, that you bet on baseball, and all will be forgiven.
Then Rose entered the confessional of public opinion, offered his secular acts of contrition, and what happened? Nothing. No reinstatement. No special ballot for the Hall of Fame. If anything, he’s even more a cautionary tale than ever, subsisting on hawking his signature in places as disparate as Cooperstown and Las Vegas.
It was the same thing with Mark McGwire: Confess. Cleanse. Scour. Tell us what we already know, that you shot yourself with enough junk over the years to kill a Clydesdale. He did. We listened. And his vote totals for the Hall have gone down since he did, and he’s still a pariah anywhere beyond the St. Louis city line.
Alex Rodriguez? For years we watched him suffer under the glare of enormous talent and bigger expectation. October after October we watched him shrink to the moment, recoil from the glare. We saw Joe Torre hit him eighth one year. We saw Paul Byrd strike him out with speed-limit fastballs. He was called a choker and worse. A cooler, a tanker, the Core Four’s embedded nemesis.
Always, there was supposed to be a simple pathway out of that dark baseball place: Rise in October, any October. As a Yankee, there would always be an opportunity, after all. And in 2009, he did. He not only played well, he carried the Yankees. He hit .365 and slugged .808, he had six homers and 18 RBIs, he all but made the arrangements for the parade up the Canyon of Heroes.
Did that change the narrative?
Of course it didn’t. In 2010, he hit .219 with two extra-base hits in nine postseason games, but the memory of ’09 was still fresh and he was mostly given a pass. Last year, it was .111, two lousy singles in 18 at-bats, and the amnesia began to set in among the fans. And now, he has become a lightning rod again, his .130 average and 12 strikeouts and zero extra-base hits and helplessness against right-handers — and his series of benchings — somehow overshadowing Robinson Cano’s funnel cloud of awfulness.
Sometimes, it feels as if 2009 never happened.
Here’s the thing, though: He has an opportunity now, inside this morass of hopelessness that chokes the Yankees, to really, honestly, truly alter the script of his time as a Yankee. From Day 1 he has played — to varying degrees of comfort — in Derek Jeter’s shadow; for better or worse, that’s presently not an issue.
There are also no likely candidates to suddenly shoulder the burdens that face the Yankees. Ichiro Suzuki has embraced postseason life as a Yankee, but he’s a table-setter. Can Raul Ibanez continue to channel Roy Hobbs? It would make an impossible story even more ridiculous, but logic says he has to cool down. Mark Teixeira? Maybe. While he has hit better, he still doesn’t have a home run this autumn. And Cano, Nick Swisher and Curtis Granderson have their own issues to deal with.
Which brings us to A-Rod, and let’s get one thing out of the way: If Girardi opts for Eric Chavez tonight, it would be a mistake.
Chavez hasn’t exactly made anyone forget Lou Gehrig with his bat. And, sure, for all of A-Rod’s struggles against righties, you would think sitting him against Justin Verlander tonight would almost be a merciful idea.
Except Rodriguez has had as much success as you can ask for against a righty of Verlander’s pedigree — eight hits and three home runs against only six strikeouts in 30 career at-bats. Better, much of that work is recent. A single, a homer and two RBIs in The Bronx on April 27. A walk, a single and a homer at Detroit on June 3.
Put it on A-Rod’s shoulders. Put it on his back. He has waited for nine years to be able to call the Yankees his team, and there never has been a better time than now. If that doesn’t happen — well, what was your better alternative?
But if it does? That might be something that can actually turn the narrative in his favor. Forever.