Just as the New York Yankees had to endure all of last season, the American League team will be forced to play Tuesday’s All-Star game without Alex Rodriguez. Unlike last season, Rodriguez is not sitting out the game because he has been suspended for use of performance-enhancing drugs. He has to miss the game for the simple reason that he wasn’t selected for the A.L. team.
That alleged oversight was big news in New York area newspapers, which have generally excoriated Rodriguez for the past few years for his use of PEDs, his denials of his use of PEDs, his legal and verbal attacks on everyone who opposed him or, in the case of his own union, didn’t defend him as he thought he deserved to be defended and the arbitrator whom he was asking to overturn his suspension.
In short, he became a pariah only to be maligned and scorned. Suddenly, though, he has become a sympathetic figure. All right, if not sympathetic, appreciated.
How is it possible for someone to go from pariah to Mr. Popularity? Apparently by hitting 16 home runs, driving in 47 runs and batting .276 only 18 days from his 40th birthday in a comeback that was completely unforeseen.
“The big loser from A-Rod’s All-Star snub isn’t A-Rod,” the New York Post headline read.“Klapisch: All-Star snub means A-Rod’s left taking high road again,” said the Bergen (N.J.) Record.
Even The New York Times, whose lead baseball writer’s words drip with venom when he writes about A-Rod, seemed to feel sorry for Rodriguez, posting this headline: “Alex Rodriguez Is Passed Over for American League All-Star Bench.”
These headlines and the articles that accompanied them reported the failure of Rodriguez to be selected as a reserve designated hitter for the All-Star game. Did he deserve to be selected? I don’t think so despite his impressive comeback.
I believe he was passed over because other players were more deserving. I don’t believe the “snub” – newspapers love that annual story on which players were snubbed – stemmed from A-Rod’s 2014 suspension or his boorish behavior. This wasn’t a vote for the Hall of Fame. That “snub” will come later, just as it has come for Barry Bonds, Rogers Clemens, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire.
No, there were players ahead of Rodriguez. Prince Fielder was one. He can substitute for the starting designated hitter, Nelson Cruz, or for Eric Hosmer, who finished 3 million votes behind Miguel Cabrera but will start at first base because Cabrera is on the disabled list.
Rodriguez finished fifth in the voting for designated hitter behind Cruz, Kendrys Morales, Edwin Encarnacion and Victor Martinez.
Taking up A- Rod’s case in the Post, Ken Davidoff wrote:
“Monday night’s big news, however, will not go down as a loss for America’s most beloved supervillain. Rather, it’s a loss for baseball.
“Alex Rodriguez is not an All-Star, and that’s just a darn shame for those of us who enjoy some spice in our lives and who take pleasure in taunting moralistic finger-waggers. More to the point, it gives American League manager Ned Yost a worse chance to capture home-field advantage for his league’s World Series representative, and it surely deletes a ratings point or three from the Midsummer Classic’s telecast on July 14.
“Most to the point, he deserved to make it on the merits of his statistics. His narrative should have only enhanced his candidacy.”
To support his position, Davidoff quotes Hank Steinbrenner, son of George and a Yankees’ general partner, who is responsible for the whole Rodriguez fiasco.
After Rodriguez opted out of his contract during the 2007 World Series, the Yankees’ hierarchy decided to let him walk and said the club would not sign him to a new contract. In a quirk of timing, Steinbrenner was the managing partner in those last few months of the year and contradicted that decision. Panicking, he decided the Yankees had to have A-Rod and agreed to a 10-year contract that was worth more than his original 10-year contract that the Yankees inherited when they obtained him from Texas.
Steinbrenner did not last long as the man running the Yankees – his more stable younger brother Hal replaced him – but Hank was in the position long enough to create the havoc that would become A-Rod.
Nor surprising, then, that Hank should laud Rodriguez, declaring to Davidoff, “I think it’s one of the greatest comeback years any player has ever had. “… He deserves [to be on the All-Star team]. … The bad hips, all the other stuff, more than a year off at his age, as well. To come back and do what he’s done is pretty amazing.”
“A-Rod could have served as a representative for the notion that second (and third) chances are good for the world,” Davidoff continued. “I bet he would’ve gladly joined his new pal, first-year commissioner Rob Manfred, in a community activity. And he would’ve received the loudest reaction of any visiting player, guaranteed, at Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park.
“It’s the game and the Game,” Davidoff concluded, “that will miss out on what would have been a heck of a story for a spectacle always looking for more juice (pun intended).”
Writing in the Bergen (N.J.) Record, Bob Klapisch said the people who loathe Rodriguez are mean spirited and shortsighted:
“Rodriguez is baseball’s most visible celebrity – OK, villain. Ignoring him is impossible, and he would’ve helped MLB sell the Midsummer Classic to millions of casual fans who ordinarily skip out during the sport’s four-day break.
“Truth is, the All-Star Game is a boring, pointless exercise. It’s desperately accessorized itself with gimmicks such as the Home Run Derby and Celebrity Softball Game and the Futures Game, a showcase for prospects. And the winner Tuesday night determines who enjoys home-field advantage in the World Series – another fake perk. Does Jonathan Papelbon, the Phillies’ lone representative, currently 18½ games out of first place, really care where Game 7 is played?
“What MLB really needs is a story line with an edge. A-Rod would’ve been perfectly cast as either a) a redemptive hero or b) the snake who conned a nation. Either way, who wouldn’t watch?”
Mark Feinsand of the Daily News wrote that A-Rod’s presence in Cincinnati would have added drama to the All-Star game and lamented that he “couldn’t find his way on to the team….”
In the Times, Billy Witz wrote that “no matter how endearing the image of a remorseful Rodriguez is these days or how persuasive his bounce-back season has been…it was not enough for him to be selected Monday as a backup designated hitter…”
I was going to write a column proposing that Major League Baseball drop the All-Star game from its schedule, but I let myself be talked out of it. The best arguments for retaining the game seem to be it’s still the only legitimate all-star game in the four major league sports, it inspires fans to cast a record number of on-line votes (620 million this year), it creates fan debate and FOX pays a lot of money for it despite poor television ratings that nevertheless make it the most widely watched sports event between June and September.
You’ll note I did not credit the absurd link that Bud Selig created and Rob Manfred has endorsed between the outcome of the All-Star game and homefield advantage in the World Series.
The link is so ridiculous that even some baseball broadcasters have begun to ridicule it. When those guys start criticizing something that the baseball establishment endorses, you know it’s bad.