BLAST OFF! Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez rounds the bases after hitting his first rehab assignment home run (inset) for the Trenton Thunder last night in Reading, Pa. (
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Torii Hunter has publicly discussed race, sexuality and steroids among many other topics during his 15-plus years in the major leagues. Yesterday alone, listening to him for about eight minutes, he produced opinions and anecdotes on Mariano Rivera; Hideki Matsui; Mike Trout; Detroit, Southern California and Minneapolis; his age; and the rise in strikeouts.
By pure accident, though, The Post finally found a topic outside the perimeter of Hunter’s vast plate coverage.
“Anything with A-Rod is a hot tamale,” the Tigers outfielder said yesterday at Citi Field.
Once upon a time, Alex Rodriguez dominated this day before the All-Star Game. Media would swarm his table in the interview room, and report his often silly statements worldwide. Fans in the host stadium would boo him with far greater vigor than they would anyone else.
Now, the Yankees’ beleaguered third baseman is nothing more than a ghost at the game’s jewel event, his name spoken only when trouble-making reporters ask about him.
“What [can] I say, man?” said former Met Carlos Beltran, starting in right field for the National League. “As a human being, sometimes you make decisions you regret. In his case, I don’t know. He needs to answer that question.
“I know when I look at him, I look at one of the best players in the game. Very talented. Had so many good years in baseball. At the end of the day, what’s going to happen to him? I don’t know.”
What’s very likely going to happen, as soon as tomorrow, is Major League Baseball is going to suspend A-Rod and many of his fellow alleged Biogenesis clients, at which point there will be massive appeals (during which A-Rod and other labeled first-time offenders can keep playing). In the meantime, A-Rod — who homered last night for Double-A Trenton — could make his 2013 Yankees debut Monday in Texas. Or he and the Yankees could decide his surgically repaired left hip needs more time to heal, in which case A-Rod probably would return to rehabilitation at the Yankees’ minor-league complex in Tampa.
As has been his story since nearly the beginning of his career, the mention of A-Rod’s name generates mixed reactions. Some like him, plenty dislike him and nearly everyone holds at least some respect for what he has accomplished.
Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki wears No. 2 in honor of A-Rod’s Yankees teammate Derek Jeter, yet he said yesterday he had a poster of A-Rod (wearing a Mariners uniform) in his childhood bedroom.
“Alex is at a tough point in his career, I think. All the stuff surrounding him, it’s tough for him to deal with,” Tulowitzki said. “But I remember A-Rod as A-Rod, the best player in the game. … I think if you ask a lot of guys in this room, they looked up to him.
“I feel for him, for what’s going on, but hopefully everything works out, he gets a chance to return and approach the home run record.”
For sure, the vigor with which commissioner Bud Selig has approached the Biogenesis investigation has support all over the baseball industry.
“I think that will that eliminate all the negative about the game of baseball,” Beltran said of a clean game (or as clean as possible, to be more realistic). “We want that. We do.”
Said NL manager Bruce Bochy of the Biogenesis endeavor: “We’re behind this, and hopefully when this investigation is over, we can move on, move forward, and it’s a shame we are having to deal with this now.”
A-Rod and Beltran are longtime friends; they used to share an agent in Scott Boras, and now they share a different agent in Dan Lozano.
“I send him texts once in a while,” Beltran said of A-Rod.
In enemy territory, Boston icon David Ortiz has long considered A-Rod a friend. Yesterday, however, when asked about A-Rod, he said: “I don’t want to comment on that. I’m a little too far away from that. But hopefully everything goes well.”
A-Rod, signed through 2017, still has more job security than most of the game’s elite, even as his own future is insecure. Yet it speaks volumes about his status that we’re going to be talking about him far more after the Midsummer Classic than during. And that some people would rather not talk about him at all.