[轉錄] A-ROD BLAST NOT 'TYPICAL'
From: http://www.nypost.com/sports/yankees/66464.htm
A-ROD BLAST NOT 'TYPICAL'
Mike Vaccaro
May 24, 2006 -- BOSTON - He knows what's said about him, and what's
written, and what's believed by a sizable segment of the Yankees' city.
He realizes that every at-bat is a referendum on him, on his legacy, on
his salary, on his career. Perhaps he even understands why all of this is
so, even if he's never quite said as much.
"It's irrelevant, what people say about me," Alex Rodriguez said last
night, a little while after his three-run home run proved to be the
deciding blow in a 7-5 Yankees victory over the Red Sox at Fenway Park.
"I know what I can do. I've been doing it for a long time."
Yankees fans are also well aware of what he can do, and that is why
they've officially engaged in a love-hate relationship to end all
love-hate relationships. In their hearts, Yankees fans know what they get
to watch every day, they understand that in Rodriguez they have perhaps
the most complete player of his generation, in the fat of the prime of
his career.
But they know other things, too.
They know that twice against the Mets on Sunday night, Rodriguez had the
chance to put the Mets away - once with the bases loaded, once with two
on and one out - and he failed to deliver both times. The first was hard
luck, a bullet that nearly knocked Cliff Floyd over. The second was
something else altogether, a rally- and game-killing double play. Chapter
one.
They know that, fairly or not, the knock on Rodriguez is that he only
hits home runs when the Yankees are way behind or when they are way
ahead. This is absurd, of course, but perception is a difficult thing to
alter, especially when, Monday night, with the Red Sox ahead by about 30
runs, Rodriguez drilled a Keith Foulke meatball into the Monster seats.
Chapter two.
Chapter three could have been last night, when Rodriguez smoked a Tim
Wakefield knuckleball and hardly seemed to believe his good fortune. At
first he couldn't pick the ball up off his bat, looking skyward, as if
he'd popped it up. Then he heard the crowd fall silent, and he noticed
Wakefield staring off into the distance. At last he saw the baseball,
just before it disappeared into a tangle of hands.
That made a 4-1 game into a 7-1 game.
And you could easily hear the chorus of scorn from here.
"Typical A-Rod . . .
Those who are inclined to rip A-Rod will ignore the small fact that
without those runs, without that homer, the Yankees don't win a ballgame
they most certainly needed to win. They will dismiss what happened later
as incidental. They are welcome to that opinion.
Other Yankees fans, smarter Yankees fans, will notice something else: For
the first time since Opening Night, Rodriguez is swinging the bat like
himself again, swinging it as he did so often during his MVP season last
year. They may notice that A-Rod's numbers are starting to fatten (.275,
11 homers, 35 RBIs) and that, no matter how irrelevant you wish to deem
them, he has now hit homers in back-to-back games against the Red Sox,
and three of the Yankees' last four games against Boston.
"That was a big one for Alex," Joe Torre said. "Especially under the
circumstances, especially in this ballpark."
Torre was referring to the fact that, as the old Fenway Park adage goes,
you can never score enough runs here, and the Red Sox promptly proved it.
Those were his specific circumstances. But he easily could have been
referring to the other circumstances, the darker ones, the ones that not
only surround Rodriguez but also clearly penetrate every now and again.
Great players don't forget how to be great overnight, and sometimes a
stretch like this really can ignite them in a different direction. The
Yankees have to hope that's what happened to A-Rod here, in what has long
been less-than-friendly confines for him. It would be an added bonus if
the same could happen for Randy Johnson, Rodriguez' future neighbor in
Cooperstown, when he takes the mound tonight.
Unless one righted immortal at a time is all the Yankees can ask for
right now.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com
--
You always knew. "But I, being poor, have only my dreams.
I have spread my dreams under your feet.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." I assume you dream, Preston.
--
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