Rodriguez worth wait -- in gold
Tuesday will be the one-year anniversary of the day Tom Hicks, owner of the Texas Rangers, called Red Sox owners John W. Henry and Larry Lucchino and asked if they might be interested in acquiring Alex Rodriguez. Better that they had never answered the phone.
Without the Sox having laid the groundwork in their failed two-month pursuit of A-Rod, who was so enthusiastic about playing for the Sox he was willing to buy his freedom from Texas, the Yankees probably never would have claimed A-Rod as their own. Ten months later, the Yankees' Valentine Day signing of Rodriguez, which they said they never could have done without the Sox showing them the way, really did turn into a Red Sox heartbreaker.
Rodriguez, who became a made Yankee with big hits in their Division Series triumph over the Minnesota Twins, doubled twice, homered, walked, and scored an LCS record five times in the Yankees' 19-8 rout of the Sox last night, all but assuring the Yankees of a return trip to the World Series at the Sox' expense. For Rodriguez, this was sweet revenge for the facial he received, courtesy of Jason Varitek's catcher's mitt, in the July 24 brawl that supposedly awakened the Sox from three months of malaise.
Since being ridiculed during a rough Patriots Day weekend back in April, when he went hitless in the first three games and wound up 1 for 17, A-Rod has pummeled Sox pitching. Including the three games of the ALCS, in which Rodriguez went 6 for 13, he is batting .397 (27 for 68) in 18 games against the Sox, with 22 runs, a dozen runs knocked in, and four home runs.
That's the kind of performance that so tantalized the Sox last winter into pursuing a deal for the reigning American League MVP. Go down that road with A-Rod, you can't come away empty-handed, which is why Henry, when asked if he had to do it over again after A-Rod became a Yankee and Nomar Garciaparra was traded away, cryptically replied: "That's like asking me if I wish I had bought stock in
No use in the Sox beating themselves up about it now, said Yankees Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, who said he's talked to Sox chairman Tom Werner about the A-Rod negotiations.
"It doesn't matter now," said Jackson, who was here for the original Boston Massacre (non-baseball division) back in 1978. "It really doesn't. He wasn't going to score 20 runs for you, now was he? We scored 19 runs, right?"
Sure, Jackson said, he could have envisioned Rodriguez in the home team's dugout. "It would have been great for him to play on any big stage, with his skills," Jackson said. "No doubt about it, he's a great player,"
One, he added, who already is establishing his bona fides as a great Yankee.
"A-Rod wants it as bad as anybody I've ever been around," Jackson said. "He may give the press a lot of BS [how's that for the pot calling the kettle black?], but he's all baseball."
Back in December, when A-Rod and his wife, Cynthia, were dining on stone crab at Henry's Florida mansion, and Cynthia's Lowell-based relatives were bombarding her with calls asking if her husband was really going to wind up with the Olde Towne Team, A-Rod loved the idea of making history with the Sox. It was a natural, his joining this side of the Sox-Yank rivalry, while ratcheting up his tete a tete with Derek Jeter.
Instead, after Aaron "Bleeping" Boone tore up his knee playing basketball in the offseason, the Yankees decided it was worth making a call to the Rangers to see if A-Rod might consider the idea of moving to third base and playing alongside Jeter. So desperate was Rodriguez to abandon Texas, where the Rangers had finished last in all three seasons since he'd signed his record 10-year, $252 million contract, that he agreed to a notion he had said privately just weeks earlier he never would entertain. Had he wound up with the Red Sox, A-Rod would have enthusiastically echoed Curt Schilling's declaration, "I guess I hate the Yankees now."
Instead, he is singing a different tune, that he couldn't imagine a more perfect place than the Bronx. In the Division Series against the Twins, Rodriguez batted a team-high .421, including three doubles and a home run. With the Yankees down a run in the 12th inning in Game 2, A-Rod hit a tying double. In the deciding Game 4, he doubled, stole third, and scored the winning run on a wild pitch.
Last night, A-Rod opted not to rub the what-might-have-beens into Red Sox faces.
"I don't think about that too much," he said. "It's almost ancient history to me. At the time, it was very emotional for me. When the deal fell through, the Yankees came calling. It's kind of ironic that I'm here, playing for the Yankees."
The Red Sox last winter had been willing to jettison both Manny Ramirez and Garciaparra to bring A-Rod here. For his part, A-Rod told his friends that if he came to Boston, he would go to the World Series. Who could have imagined that he is on the verge of being proven right, but that he would be doing so in pinstripes?
