LOS ANGELES — The pitch came in at 95 mph, and it left at a significantly greater pace. And with one swing of his bat, Alex Rodriguez had taken the Teddy Roosevelt Memorial High Road approach toward dealing with what must surely be one of the most ambiguous weekends of his career.
With one swing of his bat, Rodriguez had pasted a Vicente Padilla fastball, sent it soaring over Manny Ramirez’ head in the vicinity of the Mannywood section of the Dodger Stadium bleachers, cracked open a 1-1 tie. And delivered his teammates a 2-1 victory and himself an opening salvo in his frost-dried cold war with Joe Torre.
“Joe did a lot of good things for me,” Rodriguez would say, “I hear his voice often.”
Torre had called this weekend gathering between the Dodgers and the Yankees “Old Home Week,” and he spent so much of the late afternoon affixing long embraces on old friends and former players. He stepped out of the dugout and walked into a postcard, 70-year-old man on a perfect 70-degree day, the California sun still high in a pristine sky.
He walked to the top step of the dugout where his friend, Billy Crystal, was standing. Crystal, noted Yankees fan and former spring trainee, wore a neutral red cap and embraced the Dodgers manager. It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and a few of Torre’s players were already warming up at Dodger Stadium.
“Hell of a day,” Torre said.
“Let’s play two,” Crystal quipped.
“Let me get through this one, will you?” Torre said.
Still, for all of hugs he distributed, all the smiles he shared for photographers all across the Dodgers’ batting practice, the thing most noticeable about all of it was who he
Earlier, Torre had expressed a desire to shake Rodriguez’ hand, said that he would explicitly wait through batting practice for the right time to make public amends. But Rodriguez never made a first move, and when he was done with his calisthenics he jogged out to right field and Torre finally gave up.
“This is nice,” he said, “but I have to go to work.”
Afterward, Rodriguez tried to put off the obviously awkward situation as long as possible, pleading, “Let’s talk baseball first, then the other stuff, OK?”
Then, after dealing with the baseball stuff, he said, straight face intact, that he never saw Torre at all during BP, that there was no slight intended.
“It’s a long weekend,” he said, smiling. “We still have two more games.”
Would he shake Torre’s hand, he was asked.
“Why wouldn’t I?” he replied. “Look, I didn’t play for him as long as some of the other guys did. My relationship with him is .¤.¤. different than theirs.”
Maybe A-Rod could have done the politically expedient thing, offered up a quick handshake for the cameras right then and been done with it. But wouldn’t that have been hypocritical? If A-Rod does still resent Torre — and he not only is allowed, he is also entitled — why pretend otherwise?
Torre admitted earlier that his wife, Ali, had suggested that perhaps the angst that surrounded his departure was mainly of his own doing. He said he agreed with her, said his tendency to be a tad over-sensitive might well have contributed to much of the messiness.
“I don’t think the wounds are that deep,” he said. “Maybe a scrape or two.”
That may be true, or it may be the attempt of a man to move on with his. Either way, what’s happened has happened. What’s done is done. Life around the Yankees went on when Joe McCarthy went on to manage the Red Sox and it went on when Billy Martin managed the A’s. The Yankees are bigger than one man, always have been, a lesson first delivered when Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were both forced to pay their way into Yankee Stadium in their retirement.
And goes on still.