On other days, with an other player, this would have been nothing more than a garbage-time moment, a fatten-the-average RBI double that sliced a four-run deficit to a three-run deficit with two outs in the ninth inning. On other days, with just about any other player, hardly anyone would’ve perked up. Joe Girardi included.
But the player in question was Alex Rodriguez, making his first appearance for the Yankees in five days, and as we’ve come to know all too well there are very few things that A-Rod ever does that slip quietly into the ether. And now, two outs in the ninth, facing a pitcher (Brad Lidge) against whom he normally batters baseballs very hard, he’d smoked a laser into the corner. Mark Teixiera scored. The remnants of 47,414 stood and cheered.
Girardi stood and glared. He noted that Rodriguez had glided around first before diving head-first into second, more than running.
“If he’s being cautious, that’s one thing,” Girardi conceded. “But if it was pain that was affecting him, that’s something else.”
A few minutes later, A-Rod, standing in front of his locker, shrugged.
“I felt good,” he said. “In a four-run game, I didn’t see the benefit in going crazy there, or later, after Robbie [Cano] got a hit, in tearing around third.”
“So you’re OK?” he was asked.
“I’m OK,” he replied.
And so we were allowed to peel another A-Rod flavored evening off the Yankee calendar, a 6-3 loss to the Phillies that reduced the Yankees’ record with A-Rod to 35-24, as their record without him stood unchanged at 6-0, which is a quirky stat with which to share a laugh and obscure two issues that will not go away soon.
1. What does the hip/groin injury mean for A-Rod’s season? Is this a nagging problem that will hinder or hamper him for the next four months? Will he be able to play third base before the Yankees head off to National League parks next week? And did anyone even notice that Kevin Russo handled the hot corner for the Yankees last night, on a night when Jamie Moyer turned the clock back to his rookie year of 1937 to handcuff the Yankee lineup?
“I am not concerned,” Rodriguez said, stone-faced, but the fact that his usually reticent manager was so willing to share the concern he felt watching A-Rod jog from home to second tells something of a different story.
And, 2.: What does this mean for A-Rod moving forward?
This is a bit more intriguing, if less pressing. It should not go unnoticed that Chipper Jones has strongly hinted he’s going to retire at season’s end — two years after winning a batting title — and at age 38 he is only three years older than A-Rod. Now, it should be noted that Jones and A-Rod occupy opposite ends of the work ethic scale — Jones a noted workout slacker, Rodriguez a gym rat. But the body usually listens to its own fickle, flighty masters and nobody ever really knows when thirtysomethings start acting thirtysomething.
And a bum hip is a bum hip.
It is interesting that A-Rod fights his way back into the batting order in the same week that Tiger Woods will try to add a 15th major to his trophy case at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. For while it is still entirely possible — likely, even — that Woods will win the four majors he needs to tie Jack Nicklaus’ sacrosanct record, and the fifth needed to break it . . . well, suddenly that doesn’t seem like such a two-foot putt anymore, does it?
It wasn’t just Tiger’s body that betrayed him, of course. But life has a way of intruding on our expectations. Until recently, A-Rod seemed just as solid a lock for 800 home runs as Tiger was for 20 majors. Those records may still fall; it might even be likely — inevitable, even — that they do. They just don’t seem like lead-pipe guarantees anymore.
“I was just being slow,” A-Rod said, smiling, referring to his home-to-second jaunt. Maybe that’s right. But it’s really not in his best interest to feel any other way about that, is it?