THE deal is already done with the Angels, unless of course Alex Rodriguez is getting an owner’s share of the Cubs, just in case the Red Sox won’t pay just about anything to steal a reigning MVP away from the Yankees. Provided, of course, Boston can’t match what the Giants will pay to replace the all-time home-run king with an even better player.
Everybody has an idea about where Alex Rodriguez is going, even if a lie detector would indicate Scott Boras still doesn’t. Either way, the canary in the agent’s cheek gets fatter by the day and the anvil over George Steinbrenner’s and Brian Cashman’s heads becomes heavier.
Melky Cabrera, with a barehanded pick and relay of Aaron Hill’s 10th-inning double off the fence, then a two-out, game-winning single, yesterday finally put away a game, 12-11, that A-Rod had already won twice and almost a third time.
He launched a screaming two-run double in the sixth to turn a two-run deficit into a 4-3 lead, hit a two-out single to break an 8-8 tie in the seventh, hustled to a two-out double in the ninth that lacked only a Hideki Matsui single for A-Rod to provide the winning run.
“I kept asking him when he was going to get a hit,” Joe Torre, almost as punchy as his bullpen, said with a laugh at the end of a five-hour game that started 90 minutes late.
After six months of watching A-Rod walk on water, we’re convinced he could have pitched the eighth better than Kyle Farnsworth and Kei Igawa, too. The pitching kept coughing up leads and Rodriguez, 4-for-5 with three RBIs, kept refusing to let the Yankees lose, as he has uncannily all season, as he will in future seasons in Chicago, Anaheim, San Francisco, Boston or New York.
After all those millions Steinbrenner has wasted over 30 years on so many players who failed either physically or mentally, it remains hard to believe the Yankees are not going to do whatever it takes, short of welcoming a new ownership partner, to keep a reigning MVP.
Having had Rodriguez at a Texas-paid $11 million-a-year discount for four seasons, they can more than afford to put those savings into retaining him, provided A-Rod wants to be here. While he hasn’t said that definitively, he hasn’t indicated otherwise, only warms to each “MVP! MVP!” chant by giving the people exactly what they have come to expect.
Rodriguez’s 146th RBI yesterday passed Don Mattingly for the second-highest season total in Yankee history, nine behind Joe DiMaggio’s 155 in 1948. A-Rod is only the fourth player, after Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx and Sammy Sosa, to post at least two seasons of at least 50 homers, 130 RBIs and 130 runs.
“He does a lot for our personality,” Torre understated. “Everybody looks to him because of the kind of year he’s having, and when he gets a hit, it perks everybody up.
“Plus, his aggressiveness on the bases.”
Plus diving stops, like the one Friday; plus his durability; plus, considering what Rodriguez went through a year ago, walk-year proof before our eyes that he has become tough enough mentally to overcome anything.
Friday night, packing a 3-for-29 into the beginning of a critical series, he hit the ball hard four times out of five before yesterday doing everything but stopping the rain sooner or the bullpen bleeding later.
“The last few days have been a lot better,” Rodriguez said. “It would have been a huge blow to lose this game, especially after last [Friday] night. Hopefully, we can build on it.”
He meant the team, not his resume. But they are the same thing at this stage, every hit both bringing the Yankees this much closer to both pulling off a remarkable 13th straight postseason berth and making them big losers if they can’t keep one of the best players, of all the great players, Yankee Stadium has ever seen.