TOM MIHALEK/AP This is a face, apparently, that only Suzyn Waldman could love. She says she finds the disgraced Yankees slugger, a proven liar, 'impossible to dislike.'
There was a time, between his Tampa tent revival and Biogenesis, when Yankees voices were not drilling down into Alex Rodriguez’s performance enhanced past. When it came to pinstriped cheaters, like Andy Pettitte and Jason (The Giambalco) Giambi, this was also standard operating procedure.
This is not to say the performance-enhancing stylings of these players were never mentioned. They were — briefly, before voices moved on to real baseball matters. There was every reason to believe orders, er, suggestions about ignoring, er, dealing with Yankees PED issues were passed directly down to the broadcast booths from the Yankees’ high command.
What little common sense we have tells us this is all about to change. Does anyone really believe Yankee poohbahs, like prez Randy Levine, whom Team A-Rod figuratively defecated on, are going to mind if any Bombers broadcasters direct verbal heat at Rodriguez?
And if you can cleverly eviscerate A-Rod in the process, you too may be next in line for a Monument Park ceremony.
Balanced commentary coming out of the booths concerning A-Rod will be brief and fleeting. Your Yankees world has been officially turned upside down. Suzyn (Ma Pinstripe) Waldman is torn. She knows the stain on Rodriguez’s career is indelible.
“But I find him impossible to dislike,” Waldman, the Yankees radio analyst, told me during a telephone conversation. “I’m not defending him. I think what he did was stupid more than anything else. I know he’s lied. He’s made every wrong decision. He says things and does things and you just want to say ‘Why?’ I also know you can’t go wrong for dumping on Alex. This is what it's become. What’s he supposed to do?”
In the next breath, Waldman answered her own question. There’s nothing left for him to do, she said, but play baseball. She tisked-tisked all the talk of distraction, reminding the free world A-Rod is a walking one.
“The way this offense is (coming into spring training) they better hope he still can play,” she said. “Look, it’s not my job to psychoanalyze Alex. What I do, and sometimes don’t, understand is the anger directed at him. This just didn’t start with the steroids. His persona, for many people, has never been likeable.”
The “why” of this is something she has questioned for years. They go way back, to long before he even came to the Yankees. And Waldman can detail A-Rod’s first road trip as a Bomber as if it just happened — Seattle, Boston, Texas. The booing was vicious, especially during the first game in Arlington.
“I went up to him and said: ‘Is there anybody who likes you?’ He just shook his head,” she said. “And then he started laughing.”
All these years later the question has not lost its relevancy. It’s worthy of some sort of poll. Of course it would not supersede one of the more pressing issues inside the Valley of the Stupid and other media precincts: Will Alex Rodriguez be a distraction?
The question might as well be a punch line.
“Alex Rodriguez has been a distraction since the day he walked in a major-league clubhouse,” Waldman said, laughing.
Kathy Willens/AP Rodriguez will be back in the Yankee dugout with manager Joe Girardi (r.) this season.
Yeah Ma, but this is the new, improved, lying, cheating, smearing, scene-stealing, peeing A (Scorched Earth) Rod. The guy fresh off a season-long suspension. This is a man who, considering the content and lonely-teardrops tone of the never-ending piece, spent months lying on a couch having his brain scoped by ESPN The Magazine.
Distraction?
“Just look at this team. This isn’t the ’98 Yankees coming up here,” Waldman said. “They (the players) are probably going to like the distraction. Everyone (reporters) will be in Alex’s corner of the clubhouse and not asking some pitcher why his elbow blew out.”
And once the attempts to get Rodriguez to say what he didn’t say in that handwritten missive end, the questions will be about his swing, his ability and if another 0-for-4 day was discouraging. Daily, the notebooks and microphones will want to know how long before he knows if he has a career left.
Waldman and John Sterling (“I’m rooting for Alex, he’s a friend”), on the radio, will be the eyes of those who cannot see if A-Rod’s surgically repaired hips are rotating properly or if he looks like a 39-year-old man turning 70.
And once the season starts, and if he hits his 655th home run, moving him five closer to Willie Mays on the all-time list?
“What are we supposed to do?” Waldman asked. “Say it doesn’t count?”
The time for home runs and a baseball life is running out on Rodriguez, leaving Waldman a small window to reflect on a player with more talent than anyone she had ever seen play.
“Why, why did he choose this path?” She asked. “Why would he think he had to do this?”
Worthy questions, followed by answers that would be hard to believe. Even for Suzyn Waldman.
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