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MLB News | March 23, 2010
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A-Rod’s new hue is a lot like a glow
By Tim Brown
March 23, 2010
Tampa, FL — Alex Rodriguez(notes) said he had kept nothing special from that cool early November night when he became a champion, lifting a career’s – a life’s – burden.
In the months since, he’d watched some highlights, seen his first baseman glove the final out, seen his own face go from expectant to delirious, seen New York join him in a helluva party.
Near the end of September, he and I had sat in front of his locker in Anaheim. When the notebook was stashed, he’d leaned toward me and said he wouldn’t say so publicly, but he believed he was in a perfect space – physically, emotionally, spiritually. He believed he would have a big postseason. He couldn’t explain it exactly, but it just felt right, that this was it after all those failures.
In 15 playoff games he batted .365 with six home runs and 18 RBIs, and there he was, dancing and laughing like he could breathe again.
“I just had a good feeling,” he said of his state of mind on the eve of the October, site of his near annual disappointments. “It’s hard to put anything into words and I’d rather not try. The answer for you is I’m glad it worked out.”
But, no, he said, no keepsakes.
“I’m not a big reminisce guy,” he said. “I’ll take the memories. The feeling when we won.”
Then, however, he lifted a sleeve of his jacket and curled his finger around a narrow plastic band on his wrist, giving it a tug.
“Well,” he said, “I’m still wearing this.”
It was blue-ish, perhaps midnight blue when he’d put it on, but not now. It was faded something closer to royal, and scuffed, and stained, a little ripe. Maybe it didn’t look the same as it once did, but there was something about resiliency in a bracelet that carried and witnessed a championship. Maybe it wasn’t perfect like when it came out of its wrapper, and it seems out of place at times, but there was something honest in it.
Just like A-Rod.
At 34, Rodriguez will begin his 17th major league season in less than two weeks. He’s an MVP three times, a threat to the all-time home run record (he’ll reach 600 with his 17th of the season) and one of the great enigmas of our generation. Beyond simply talented, beyond merely dedicated, he’s also run himself into the ground so often he should have been issued knee pads at birth.
Otherwise issued a sturdy body and head for the game, he’s an admitted steroid user. On Friday, according to a New York Times report, he’ll meet with federal authorities investigating whether a Canadian doctor – Anthony Galea – distributed performance-enhancing drugs in the U.S. He does not seem concerned.
Instead, he seems comfortable.
Like his spring training swing, Rodriguez remains a work in progress. He’s been exposed and humiliated, and he has tried to change. Damaged by wear-and-tear physically and personally, he has reached for resolve. Like I said, a work in progress. Just as he played away from those terrible Octobers, he turns and faces his terrible decisions, or tries. When Rodriguez returned from hip surgery and revelations that he hadn’t always been alone in the batter’s box, he declared he would just play ball, to make baseball about baseball, the Yankees and winning.
When the championship came and he’d done more than his share, Rodriguez kept it that way. Saturday Night Live asked him to host. People from Letterman and Leno asked him to appear. Major magazines asked to do the story of A-Rod’s rebirth. He turned them all down.
“I learned a lesson last year,” he said. “Going into a season with no expectations was a new experience. Now I’m in a really good place. As good as I’ve been in my career, that’s for sure, if not the best.”
He’ll take his shots, of course. It comes with being him, in that city, on that team. Just, maybe, not so many will be self-inflicted. His teammates undoubtedly will like him better for it. Presumably, he’ll like himself more for it.
“I think he’s still evolving,” manager Joe Girardi said, “because we learn from experience. … He does seem like he’s in a really good place and you hear him laugh a lot. I love that. I love hearing people laugh, because it means they love what they do.”
Girardi isn’t the only one to notice.
“He was completely different all year last year,” general manager Brian Cashman said. “He’s the same as he was last year, other than maybe he smiles more. I know he will have to deal with less scrutiny because he won the championship.”
Rodriguez might have believed winning would bring serenity. Turned out, the championship followed.
“Did it change me? No,” he said. “I think the thing that changed me most was going back to that press conference [where he admitted using steroids]. Everything changed after that.”
He did say the championship was “addictive,” that he couldn’t wait to do it again. He said he sensed his teammates had become “a brotherhood,” because he, like others who’d not been there before, had come to understand and appreciate its demands.
“Believing,” he said, “is one thing.”
Changing, accepting, winning, those are different. The process is imperfect. The people are imperfect. A-Rod, for the moment, simply stands among them.
He’s the one with the blue bracelet.
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