In the past 10 years, millions of words have been written and spoken about the therapist’s dream marriage between Alex Rodriguez and the New York Yankees. But really, you can summarize this roller-coaster relationship with just two words:
It’s complicated.
The Yankees are better off for having acquired A-Rod from the Rangers exactly 10 years ago Sunday, and worse off for having re-signed him as a free agent in December 2007. Except that if they stayed apart after their first breakup, the merger would have been deprived of its most exciting moment.
Rodriguez, with two Most Valuable Player awards in a Yankees uniform and one of the finest Octobers ever, helped the YES Network become the gold standard for team-owned regional sports networks, and he deserves a share of credit (or blame, among the game’s aesthetes) for the existence of the new Yankee Stadium. Scores of people under Yankees employ increased their earnings on his back, and Rodriguez capitalized financially on his association with the Yankees.
If only he hadn’t accused the team’s upper management and medical staff of conspiring with Major League Baseball to ruin him, gotten caught using illegal performance-enhancing drugs, performed horribly in six of his eight pinstripe postseasons and generally created a level of havoc that is arguably unprecedented in professional sports history, this might have gone down as the most lucrative team-player partnership ever.
Remember, as we entered the new millennium, A-Rod stood as the rare baseball superstar who never, ever would make The Bronx his workplace. He had set a course to be the best shortstop ever, and the Yankees already deployed a franchise shortstop in Derek Jeter.
A decade-long sequence of fascinating timing — fortuitous or not, depending on your perspective — began when Rangers owner Tom Hicks hit financial troubles, prompting him to give up on his grand vision just three years into his 10-year, $252-million commitment to A-Rod. Then, after A-Rod’s close call with joining the Red Sox, came Aaron Boone’s basketball injury that ended his 2004 season before it even started, leaving a gaping hole at third base for an otherwise stellar Yankees lineup. Ironic, don’t you agree, that A-Rod became a Yankee only because he selflessly agreed to slide over to the hot corner?
If you want to find the genesis to the sourness underscoring A-Rod’s time as a Yankee, however, don’t look to the man himself, his quirks and flaws stipulated. Look instead to the Yankees’ inability to pitch well in their first four playoff runs with Rodriguez.
A-Rod reported to Steinbrenner Field in 2004 to a clubhouse that had just lost Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and David Wells — three of the franchise’s best October starting pitchers. From 2004-07 came folks like Kevin Brown, Javier Vazquez, Jaret Wright, Carl Pavano, Randy Johnson and Kei Igawa. That sextet earned approximately $131 million from the Yankees in that period (including money sent in trades of Vazquez, Wright and Johnson to other clubs) and combined for one winning postseason start (Brown, in 2004 ALDS Game 3 against the Twins).
With the Yankees posting a combined 4.94 ERA in 123 innings pitched those four postseasons —compared to 3.34 in 898 2/3 innings pitched from 1996-2003 — the onus turned to the offense, and Rodriguez, who hit brilliantly in his first eight playoff games as a Yankee, obviously pressed from the middle of the ’04 Red Sox collapse through ’07. So did manager Joe Torre, who memorably dropped Rodriguez to sixth and then eighth in his lineup as the Yankees fell to Detroit in the ’06 ALDS.
Torre, his October returns diminishing, saw himself pushed out after the ’07 ALDS loss to Cleveland, and his departure so outraged the Yankees’ fan base that Hal and Hank Steinbrenner, having just taken over the club from their ailing father and clearly shaken by the restlessness, decided to overlook A-Rod’s many red flags — most of all his age, 32 — and committed 10 years and $275 million to the reigning AL MVP after he predictably, obnoxiously and hilariously opted out during the last game of the Red Sox-Rockies World Series.
Definitely, if the Yankees pitchers had provided more October coverage to Rodriguez and his fellow hitters in those initial years, he could have built up a greater legacy and softened the blow for what followed. Possibly, there wouldn’t have been the same sense of panic among Yankees decision-makers during A-Rod’s free agency. His current contract wouldn’t be — or at least seem — as onerous.
Let’s face it, A-Rod and the Yankees — the player addicted to the spotlight and the team addicted to buzz — were destined to be together for the long haul once Rodriguez gave up being a shortstop. And goodness, did it get much better than that 2009 championship run? For A-Rod to start the year confessing to past illegal PED drug usage and undergoing hip surgery and finish it with multiple late-inning clutch hits en route to the team’s first title in nine years? Even commissioner Bud Selig got a kick out of that one, at least until he and his lieutenants became convinced Rodriguez accomplished that magic with some illegal help from Canadian doctor Anthony Galea.
Alas, the ’09 fireworks came in Year 2 of the current contract, Year 6 of the marriage. The highlights in these past four-plus years? A-Rod hit his 600th career home run in 2010 — we know now he hit that shortly after meeting Anthony Bosch. And his 2013 wild ride, returning from a second hip surgery the same day MLB suspended him, at least brought some much-needed drama (and the accompanying attendance and ratings spike) to a largely dreary Yankees season. Of course, Yankees officials were too angry with A-Rod to appreciate that upside.
Now Rodriguez is banned from Derek Jeter’s victory lap, suspended for 2014 not really because he used illegal PEDs, but rather because he handled the entire situation recklessly. Which is an A-Rod character trait with which the Yankees are all too familiar.
The best guess remains that the relationship ends officially a year from now, with either the Yankees releasing him and eating the $61 million they owe him (for 2015-17) or with Rodriguez’s bad hips allowing the team’s insurance to cover much of that freight. No matter how it wraps up, you most likely can close out the “Pros” of this marriage analysis.
Man oh man, it’s a good list of Pros, though, isn’t it? Good enough that the Yankees shouldn’t sweat their affiliation with one of the game’s best-ever players and most compelling and frustrating personalities. He delivered enough positives to balance the negatives. They should invite A-Rod to Old-Timers’ Day down the road — might as well make a few bucks off him, right?
No matter the Yankees choose to recall this tumultuous decade, the rest of us should remember this time with gratitude and some hearty laughs. For sure, A-Rod plus the Yankees never equaled boring