The A-Rod Syndrome

I’ve dubbed it the A-Rod syndrome. Alex Rodriguez is arguably the best all around baseball player of the last twenty years, and he certainly belongs in any conversation about the all time greats. So why have New Yorkers spent so much time booing him? Many pundits with deadlines and column inches to fill devote article after article speculating over the reasons.

The most common reason presented has been the A-Rod/Jeter feud. As everyone in the Milky Way Galaxy is now abundantly aware, A-Rod gave an interview that appeared in the April 2001 issue of Esquire magazine in which he says: “Jeter’s been blessed with great talent around him,” Alex says. “He’s never had to lead. He can just go and play and have fun. And he hits second, that’s totally different than third and fourth in a lineup. You go into New York; you wanna stop Bernie and O’Neill. You never say, don’t let Derek beat you. He’s never your concern.” Before that interview, Jeter and A-Rod were famously the closest of friends. When the Yankees would travel to Seattle for a series, Jeter would reportedly eschew the team accommodations in favor of A-Rod’s guest room. The two would have dinner together every night that the Yanks were in town. Jeter once told reporters that dinners with A-Rod were probably the only time he wore his World Series rings, as a friendly reminder that A-Rod had none. Then came the interview and Jeter's burn-me-once mentality no longer considered A-Rod a friend. Jeter has been the darling of New York since 1996 and A-Rod has been the villain ever since.

What a load of crap.

In 2006 A-Rod put up a .290, 35, 121 season that the vast majority of Major Leaguers at any position on any team would consider a career year. He made only 12 errors at third base. Yet with each and every at bat A-Rod was greeted with a vitriol that you would think New Yorkers saved for the Red Sox. In 2004, Yankee darling Derek Jeter hit a career low .292 with a mere 23 HRs and 78 RBIs to go along with his 13 errors at short, yet he was cheered with each and every plate appearance at The Stadium. Now true, A-Rod’s vast talent probably has fans holding him to a higher standard, but out and out hatred for the reigning AL MVP who hits 35 HRs and knocks in 121?

Come on, surely we can do better.

“A-Rod is shit in the clutch!” the average uninformed Yankee fan will tell you, and that is why they hate him. According to ESPN.com, A-Rod’s stats in “close and late” situations from 2005 thru 2007 are .294, 12, 48 with a .913 OPS in 221 at bats. Now granted these numbers are well below his career average, but they can't be considered bad by any stretch of the imagination. By comparison, Mr. Clutch himself Derek Jeter has posted a .304, 7, 43 with an OPS nearly 90 points lower than A-Rod's, in 32 MORE at bats!

Oh come on people, there must be a GOOD reason we hate A-Rod!

In the interest of saving us all from the mind-numbing task of dissecting any more of these infantile reasons people have given for the A-Rod hatred, I will just tell you. Better yet, let me show you:

This is what A-Rod generally looks like after striking out in a key situation. You’d have to throw some chin music his way just to be sure he was awake.

Yankee fans aren’t (for the most part) stupid. We know that even Babe Ruth faltered in the clutch more than he came through. We know that the nature of the game means that players fail more often than they succeed. While there is some merit to the claim that if A-Rod is going to be making 27.5 million dollars a year he ought to put up numbers that reflect as much, but we still understand that no one can hit a home run every time he steps to the plate. We boo A-Rod because he doesn’t seem to care. We see pictures of him on the front page of the New York Post spending an August day with his wife in Central Park, shirtless, as if he hasn’t a care in the world. And then he makes three errors and goes 0-4 that evening against Toronto. Now let me be clear, I don’t care if Alex suns himself in Central Park all day every day wearing nothing but a banana-hammock (though I pray that picture wouldn’t end up anywhere I’d see it) but when he makes a habit of being photographed looking like his biggest concern is what to have for dinner that night, Yankee fans begin to feel betrayed. Yankee fans eat, breathe and sleep baseball. Yankee fans live and die with their every success and failure. We don’t ask players to hit a home run every time up, and we understand when they don’t succeed. But we do demand two things;

1) That every player leave everything he has out on the field every game

2) That every player takes the game at least as seriously as we do.

Nothing makes a Yankee fan madder than seeing a player fail in a key situation and show no hint of disappointment in himself. Consider the following examples of model Yankee citizens:

This is probably a picture of Paul O’Neill after flying out to center with nobody on base in the first inning of a scoreless game. When he would strike out with runners on base in a key situation late in a close game water coolers would get black eyes and helmets would become pureed. As for Jeter, he is the epitome of what Yankee fans want their players to be. He leaves nothing in the locker room. Whether he is diving headfirst into the stands (running full speed past a jogging A-Rod) to make a play on a foul ball, or pulling in an errant relay throw to nail Jeremy Giambi at the plate in 1-0 elimination game in the ALDS, Jeter gives 110% every single game. In addition, both Jeter and O’Neill visibly lived and died with every Yankee success. Jeter is always the first out of the dugout to congratulate a teammate on a home run; he is always vocal in his support of the team.

That’s all Yankee fans want. A-Rod may very well be torn up inside every single time he strikes out, but we aren’t mind readers. We want to see it! We want to see him jumping up and down when a teammate homers. We want to see him visibly upset when he fails, even though we all know it will happen 65-70% of the time.

Yankee fans (along with Boston and Philly fans) are pathological about their fandom. We feel an attachment to the team and we want to see that the players care about winning at least as much as we do. If A-Rod wants to be accepted as a true Yankee (especially after the whole opt-out drama) he will lose the cool cucumber attitude and start maiming some water coolers.