HOUSTON — Some years, the Yankees miss the playoffs. Some years, iconic players retire. Some years, their managerial situation is in flux.
Every year, Alex Rodriguez enters the winter in some sort of turmoil.
And so we arrive at Monday’s true postseason opening, The People (of Major League Baseball) vs. Alex Rodriguez at MLB’s Manhattan headquarters. Technically, it’s Rodriguez appealing his 211-game suspension for alleged illegal performance-enhancing drug usage and obstruction. But you get the idea.
A-Rod wears the villain’s hat and seems to enjoy doing so, and you won’t go poor wagging your finger at the Yankees’ third baseman for his many questionable decisions. Yet amidst all the noise, it’s easy to miss out on a reality of this situation:
Rodriguez has the least to lose of anyone involved.
Oh, sure, he can say, “I’m fighting for my life,” as he did Saturday, but that’s more a function of him playing his role and trying to deliver us juicy (pun intended) quotes. At Minute Maid Park on Sunday, before the Yankees concluded their season with a 14-inning, 5-1 victory over the Astros, A-Rod needed only to watch Mariano Rivera’s final farewell ceremony, which featured a salute by Roger Clemens, to appreciate how little actual verdicts matter in the nonsensical court of public opinion.
Clemens, you’ll recall, proactively got himself indicted — insisting on testifying in front of Congress, as a response to baseball’s Mitchell Report — just in an attempt to clear his name and, despite fending off that indictment, still exists as a baseball pariah everywhere besides here with the lowly Astros.
There might be nobility in taking on MLB, or even the government, but it will vindicate you only in the legal sense.
The point here being, Rodriguez’s legacy is thoroughly shot, even if his dream legal team completes a Hail Mary pass and convinces independent arbitrator Fred Horowitz to fully eliminate the suspension.
Sure, A-Rod has about $31.4 million at stake, too. However, that represents less than 10 percent of his career on-the-field earnings, and as he is displaying with his current legal bills, he has saved his money well.
It’s possible a 211-game suspension could end Rodriguez’s career simply by the atrophy of not playing for such a prolonged period. That’s no guarantee, however, and as A-Rod has shown us this season, he doesn’t have a great deal left in the tank, anyway; durability, rather than skill, is the issue. It’s not like any punishment would dramatically impact his career statistics. Tying Willie Mays at 660 career homers (and getting the $6 million) is doable for A-Rod, who’s currently at 654. The other bonuses — for tying Babe Ruth (714), Hank Aaron (755) and Barry Bonds (762) and passing Bonds — simply aren’t happening, no matter how many at-bats he accrues.
Which leads us to the other combatants in this battle. The Yankees desperately want to recoup that $31.4 million, as well as get the snowball’s chance in Houston of voiding what’s left of Rodriguez’s contract ($86 million through 2017), that would come with an upheld suspension. It would help dramatically in their bid next year to keep their payroll under $189 million. At a time when their attendance is dropping and their fans are hopping mad over the team’s direction, a little help from Horowitz would go a long way for them.
And then there’s MLB. You won’t find another human being as concerned about his legacy as is retiring commissioner Bud Selig. After instituting the toughest drug-testing program in professional sports, he would gain huge street cred by having his investigative team nail A-Rod without the benefit of a positive test. And now that he has worked so hard to convince the public of Rodriguez’s guilt, an acquittal — or even a significant reduction from 211 games — would upset the many moralists who don’t grasp illegal performance-enhancing drug usage existed long before Selig became commissioner and will continue to be a reality long after his departure.
“Let’s get it on,” Rodriguez said Saturday, and he can afford to have fun with this. It’s rare that the game’s highest-paid player is the underdog. Then again, why should an A-Rod winter be anything less than ultra-dramatic?