BALTIMORE — It is fitting that while the material boys are on the road that the fine folks who run the Yankees kept the fading icon motif going at home by hosting Madonna concerts at the Stadium last night and tomorrow.
Now there is no truth to the rumor that the Yankees have gone as long as Madonna without a big hit. However, at 54 – two years older than Cal Ripken Jr., who received a statue at a Camden Yard’s ceremony last night – Madonna might be in better shape than too many parts of the majors’ oldest roster.
Obviously, the Yankees’ problems go beyond age. Rookie David Phelps seems to be wilting in a pennant race. Joba Chamberlain can’t seem to stop giving up homers. Curtis Granderson and Nick Swisher have fallen and can’t get up. Failure from throughout the roster has led to a malaise that is eight weeks old now and – with last night’s 10-6 loss to Baltimore – dropped the Yanks back into a first-place tie with the rising Orioles.
Still, it is hard to ignore how much the Yankees are creaking toward the finish line. To watch them these days is to think as much about AARP as ERA or RBI. Aside from Derek Jeter, who has added age-less into his repertoire, the Yankees’ senior class is either broken down in body and/or performance.
Mariano Rivera, the majors’ oldest closer, has been out (knee) since early May and is not coming back. Andy Pettitte, the majors’ oldest starter, is trying to beat the clock and heal in time (ankle) to keep turning back the clock.
Raul Ibanez, 40, and Andruw Jones, 35, have essentially run out of gas, turning from useful supplementary cogs to drags on the lineup. Derek Lowe, 39, and Ichiro Suzuki, 38, had some early good moments, but have recently looked as ineffective as they were in Cleveland and Seattle, respectively. Freddy Garcia, 35, has become so weaponless after about 60 pitches that he will either be limited to about that much Sunday or be replaced as the starter altogether by Ivan Nova, who is trying to come back from his own shoulder ailment.
Mark Teixeira, once an iron man, is going to play the second-fewest games of his career because of a several injuries, including a calf problem from which he was not sufficiently healed yesterday to get back in the lineup.
His absence merely exaggerates the importance of Madonna’s one-time younger man, Alex Rodriguez, 37, who just returned after missing six weeks with a hand fracture. Like his former girlfriend, Rodriguez is a master of controversy and far removed from his best work. But I read a few reviews of Madonna’s ongoing world tour that suggest she can still — during the course of a show — resemble, well, Madonna. And the Yanks badly need that from A-Rod.
But the guy who ran – or more notably jogged – to first after hitting slow grounders in the second and fourth innings seemed closer to a walker than a walk-off. This is not about the 2-3 steps A-Rod has lost since 2009 hip surgery. This is about a guy who appeared as spry as Clint Eastwood talking to the empty chair. A-Rod did have an RBI double for a second straight game and, ultimately, the Yankees need his bat, not his legs.
They are still trusting him to hit cleanup, at least with Teixeira out. He requires the Fountain of Youth, when a mountain of truth suggest he and most of the older Yankees simply are working on fumes. Rodriguez was part of a lineup yesterday with Jeter, Ibanez and Ichiro that contained four of the six players in the majors 37 or older that had 330 at-bats.
So the Yanks cannot just have Rodriguez limp around this month. In 2009, after he was revealed as a steroid cheat and underwent hip surgery, Rodriguez came to Camden Yards and the first pitch he saw that season, on May 8, he homered off Jeremy Guthrie. The Yanks needed that kind of magic again as they began the most important series at this ballpark since 1997.
How long ago was that? It was the second full year for Jeter and Rivera, the third for Pettitte, the first for Jorge Posada, who had an entire special career in a span in which Baltimore has mainly been non-competitive.
But now the Orioles are not just a pest. There are five months in the rearview mirror and Baltimore stayed consistently strong enough to capitalize as age, among other things, helped facilitate the Yanks blowing a 10-game lead.
The Yanks need to revive, which feels like the right word with so many dragging older bodies around.
Madonna was at their home last night, an ideal symbol of the 2012 occupants of Yankee Stadium – a once great performer trying to hold on and rekindle all at the same time.