A-Rod's Revenge
Balboa-Drago. Bayside-Valley. Hogan-Zeus.
In the annals of revenge, it stacked up with the greats.
Tie game, ninth inning, Fenway Park. Curt Schilling versus Alex Rodriguez. Gary Sheffield on second after another missle of an extra-base hit. The stage was set.
Schilling -- with a noticeable gut and goatee camoflauging a newfound double-chin -- fired a splitter towards his hated rival. The Boston ace's offering didn't split however, settling in the lower half of the strike zone. Right down the middle.
A-Rod powered his bat through the zone and made perfect contact, the ball jumping off his lumber to dead centerfield. Johnny Damon raced back to the fence but his actions were merely perfunctory. As Daily News writer Mike Lupica noted to Globe scribe Dan Shaugnessey in the Boston press box, Rodriguez's drive nearly tore a hole through the 2004 championship banner atop the centerfield flagpole. Game over.
Rodriguez didn't gloat after the game. He never does. His answers often seem as if he is reading off a teleprompter, carefully worded so as to offend no one, from rivals to teammates to bat boys. There's no Reggie Jackson in A-Rod. Yankees fans tend to struggle with this, a man with looks, un-godly baseball talents and a quarter billion dollar contract, unable or unwilling to express his superiority over an opponent. It'd be nice to see the Post featuring a grinning Rodriguez pointing at the camera with the headline, A-ROD: "EAT SHIT AND DIE SCHILLING" or maybe even random speculation, A-ROD LINKS 9/11 TO DOUG MIRABELLI. But alas, Rodriguez says nothing to sell papers, keeping it all inside.
But if he doesn't express his satisfaction with the media, it doesn't mean it's not there. The 29-year-old has taken his share of verbal barbs from the Sox over the past year. First came the infamous brawl last July in Fenway, when after contesting getting hit by a pitch, Sox catcher Jason Varitek got in his face and barked "We don't throw at .260 hitters." Ouch. After an expletive-filled exchange, Varitek shoved his mitt in A-Rod's face, igniting a bench-clearing brawl. The fight and subsequent dramatic Sox win was seen as a catalyst that led to Boston's title run. In the playoffs that season, Boston players, including Schilling, called Rodriguez "bush league" for his instinct-driven karate chop of Bronson Arroyo's glove hand in Game Six. Then came spring training, as one Boston player after another attacked A-Rod for not being "a true Yankee," having achieved none of the team accolades that marked the careers of Jeter, Posada, Williams and Rivera. The slight was unfair, because frankly, who else but those four players could claim such success?
But you knew it killed him. It killed him that he had a down year in his attempt to fit in with his new team and fanbase in 2004, killed him that he faltered in the final games of th ALCS, tore him up that his teammates didn't say a word in his defense.
When Sheffield finally spoke up for A-Rod during the All-Star break last week, saying that things would be different if Sox players went after A-Rod again, it was an important sign. His own team had finally accepted him -- even if it took MVP production for it happen. It had to be a load off his broad shoulders.
And then there was Schilling. Too often, he had been the catalyst of these unfair snipes at Rodriguez. Schilling, ye of the bloody sock, now badly out of shape and trying to contribute to his team as a closer. With one pitch, A-Rod finally answered back. A 430-foot answer. Sportswriters throughout New York would have given their lone collared shirt to quote what was going through A-Rod’s mind as he rounded the bases.
The road is still uncertain for these Yankees. Injuries have decimated the staff, and now it seems as if promising rookie Chien-Ming Wang is out for the season and then some with a bum shoulder. Tonight the Yankees send some dude named Tim Redding to the mound; if this were the WWF, Bobby Heenan would dismiss him as a "ham-and-egger." A tomato can. A pushover. I’ll call him batting practice.
The problems aren't going away, but for one evening they can be forgotten. For one night, Fenway, the New York-Boston rivalry -- and revenge -- belonged to A-Rod.
It's about time.
In the annals of revenge, it stacked up with the greats.
Tie game, ninth inning, Fenway Park. Curt Schilling versus Alex Rodriguez. Gary Sheffield on second after another missle of an extra-base hit. The stage was set.
Schilling -- with a noticeable gut and goatee camoflauging a newfound double-chin -- fired a splitter towards his hated rival. The Boston ace's offering didn't split however, settling in the lower half of the strike zone. Right down the middle.
A-Rod powered his bat through the zone and made perfect contact, the ball jumping off his lumber to dead centerfield. Johnny Damon raced back to the fence but his actions were merely perfunctory. As Daily News writer Mike Lupica noted to Globe scribe Dan Shaugnessey in the Boston press box, Rodriguez's drive nearly tore a hole through the 2004 championship banner atop the centerfield flagpole. Game over.
Rodriguez didn't gloat after the game. He never does. His answers often seem as if he is reading off a teleprompter, carefully worded so as to offend no one, from rivals to teammates to bat boys. There's no Reggie Jackson in A-Rod. Yankees fans tend to struggle with this, a man with looks, un-godly baseball talents and a quarter billion dollar contract, unable or unwilling to express his superiority over an opponent. It'd be nice to see the Post featuring a grinning Rodriguez pointing at the camera with the headline, A-ROD: "EAT SHIT AND DIE SCHILLING" or maybe even random speculation, A-ROD LINKS 9/11 TO DOUG MIRABELLI. But alas, Rodriguez says nothing to sell papers, keeping it all inside.
But if he doesn't express his satisfaction with the media, it doesn't mean it's not there. The 29-year-old has taken his share of verbal barbs from the Sox over the past year. First came the infamous brawl last July in Fenway, when after contesting getting hit by a pitch, Sox catcher Jason Varitek got in his face and barked "We don't throw at .260 hitters." Ouch. After an expletive-filled exchange, Varitek shoved his mitt in A-Rod's face, igniting a bench-clearing brawl. The fight and subsequent dramatic Sox win was seen as a catalyst that led to Boston's title run. In the playoffs that season, Boston players, including Schilling, called Rodriguez "bush league" for his instinct-driven karate chop of Bronson Arroyo's glove hand in Game Six. Then came spring training, as one Boston player after another attacked A-Rod for not being "a true Yankee," having achieved none of the team accolades that marked the careers of Jeter, Posada, Williams and Rivera. The slight was unfair, because frankly, who else but those four players could claim such success?
But you knew it killed him. It killed him that he had a down year in his attempt to fit in with his new team and fanbase in 2004, killed him that he faltered in the final games of th ALCS, tore him up that his teammates didn't say a word in his defense.
When Sheffield finally spoke up for A-Rod during the All-Star break last week, saying that things would be different if Sox players went after A-Rod again, it was an important sign. His own team had finally accepted him -- even if it took MVP production for it happen. It had to be a load off his broad shoulders.
And then there was Schilling. Too often, he had been the catalyst of these unfair snipes at Rodriguez. Schilling, ye of the bloody sock, now badly out of shape and trying to contribute to his team as a closer. With one pitch, A-Rod finally answered back. A 430-foot answer. Sportswriters throughout New York would have given their lone collared shirt to quote what was going through A-Rod’s mind as he rounded the bases.
The road is still uncertain for these Yankees. Injuries have decimated the staff, and now it seems as if promising rookie Chien-Ming Wang is out for the season and then some with a bum shoulder. Tonight the Yankees send some dude named Tim Redding to the mound; if this were the WWF, Bobby Heenan would dismiss him as a "ham-and-egger." A tomato can. A pushover. I’ll call him batting practice.
The problems aren't going away, but for one evening they can be forgotten. For one night, Fenway, the New York-Boston rivalry -- and revenge -- belonged to A-Rod.
It's about time.
posted by Dan Hanzus at 6:51 AM
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