Longtime Yankee fan Greg Liotta says that in order to turn it around, A-Rod needs to actually be authentic and real.
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I’d like to thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee.
– Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio
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I remember watching my Yankees on Sunday afternoons, when I was a small boy. I remember Mickey Mantle striding to the plate. That’s how long I’ve been at this! So, you can imagine how disorienting it is to be approaching Opening Day with dread for the first time in my life.
It’s not because we have a crap team this year. We’ve had bad seasons before. The late 60’s-early 70’s were horrible, The 80’s sucked. The last few years also have been horrific, as it’s slowly dawned on us that times have changed. The age of dynasties is over, and the Yankees will probably never dominate again the way they once did. And, okay, that’s probably fair. But, and I say this will full respect for our competitors, we’ve won enough. I mean, if you can’t be content with what we’ve had, you’re just greedy. Truth be told, after the last great run (1996-2001), if you’re a Yankee fan, you have no right to complain about anything. We’ve feasted enough to know we’re full. When you’ve seen what we’ve seen, you know what a privilege its been. Come on now, just be grateful.
But now Karma is finally clearing its throat. It’s never easy to watch a once proud champion stagger around the ring like this. But still, you count your blessings.
Last year, every game was a win. Even after our stud pitcher, Masahiro Tanaka, went down, there was still Jeter. Even after he stopped hitting in August, Jeter glowed so bright it didn’t matter what he did. He could be striking out, and on the way back to the dugout he’d fart, and it would look like fireflies in the night. The entire stadium would look up and go, “oooooohhhh, ahhhhhhh.” Everybody would whip out their bottles and try to catch a firefly. Carry it home, with a little label: “Derek Jeter’s Final Fart Flies, Yankee Stadium, 2014”. You knew you were watching a once in a lifetime treasure, and you cherished it. Now the treasure’s gone. Who knows what Tanaka’s gonna bring? Sure, we know that Betances’ a Beast, and Pineda looks like an Ace. But everybody else? How about nobody else.
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This year, we have one sure thing: the A-Rod Circus returns like one of those zombie hands that pops up out of the dirt in the cemetery. We’ve had drama before, but this is different. This is the first time in history that the Yankees have a bigger problem if a player can actually perform. There are only three things that can possibly happen this year:
1. Problem: A-Rod springs to life like Rip Van Winkle, and breaks every record in the books, and establishes himself on top of the mountain in Monument Park.
2. Problem: A-Rod springs to life like Rip Van Winkle, and the Yankees pull some shady maneuver like the heartless, soul-less corporation we know they are, and put a contract out on him. Then they get pulled into court which we have to hear about for the rest of our lives. Don’t count out a come-back by Tanya Harding. Cashman may have not wanted to spring for Max Scherzer, but rumor has it he may still be in the hunt for a good knee-whacker.
3. No Problem: A-Rod falls on his face in the first week and saves everybody the headache.
Seriously now. What the heck are they gonna do when he gets hit #3,000 at Yankee Stadium? What’s the plan if he hits Home Run #715? Are we going to stand up and sing him a lullaby? Have the grounds keepers come out and do the Irish Jig? How about we mix things up a bit and use those occasions for a hot dog run instead of the 7th inning stretch?
This year, we have one sure thing: the A-Rod Circus returns like one of those zombie hands that pops up out of the dirt in the cemetery. We’ve had drama before, but this is different.
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Because, I think I can speak for all (or most of us) here: we don’t give a shit if you hit 1,000 home runs or get 6,000 hits, Alex Rodriguez. Unless this dismal team gets to the playoffs, your personal accomplishments mean nothing to us.
I wonder if A-Rod knows there is already an asterisk next to his name in the stats box on MLB. Did anyone notice that his name is completely missing on the Yankees MLB All-Time Leaders page? Yeah, I did my research.
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Yankee greats are not made on the field. They are made in our perceptions, embellished in our memories. For a Yankee, performance on the field is simply the entry fee for consideration of “greatness.”Character – as expressed in attitude, speech, and behavior, is the ticket to greatness in Yankee-land. How a Yankee is remembered is what gets him a stone in Monument Park, whether the Hall of Fame likes him or not. In Yankee land, what a man does on the field is second to what he does off the field. More importantly, what he does off the field is second to how he communicates with us about it.
Look at Clemens. We don’t care if Popeye wins the Triple Crown if he can’t admit he nipped a lil’ spinach before the game 😉
Lesser players have been immortalized in the Yankee annals. Mattingly, Chambliss, Guidry. Randolph. O’Neil, Bernie. Cone, Pettite. Wells. Good players, at best marginal Hall of Famers, but not “All-Time Greats.” Each of them at least two great seasons shy of a HOF Career. Yet they are beloved because of how they comported themselves.
Gratitude. Humility. Grit. Character. This is what makes a person GREAT. This is what gets a player enshrined in Monument Park. You have to get enshrined in people’s hearts.
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They played hurt, got dirty, and didn’t complain. When they got big hits, they praised the pitcher.
When they (pitchers) got big strikeouts, they gave credit to the catcher for calling a good game.
They didn’t sulk. They didn’t show boat or toot their own horn.
While Joe DiMaggio played baseball like Mikhail Baryshnikov, it was his rare dance of humility and pride that made him beloved. He finished with a WAR of 78.2, far below A-Rod’s 117. A-Rod was a better hitter, maybe a better baseball player. But A-Rod couldn’t crack the league Joe D was in, and the reason might be summed up best in DiMaggio’s iconic quote. That same quality was evident in Jeter’s closing comments as he said goodbye: “I was lucky, it was a dream come true to play for the Yankees. I’m grateful. Thank you. Really.”
Gratitude. Humility. Grit. Character. This is what makes a person GREAT.
This is what gets a player enshrined in Monument Park. You have to get enshrined in people’s hearts.
In terms of sheer numbers (on the Yankees), besides Babe Ruth, nobody comes close to Alex Rodriguez. Maybe if Joe D hadn’t lost 3 years of his prime to the war.… But the last guy who could put numbers up on the board but not in the seats came through about 40 years ago. He carried a big bat and bigger swagger: Reggie Jackson. He had a tough time winning us over, too, and he wasn’t even a cheater. He was just….loud.
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You see, New York is a town built by immigrants. Collectively, immigrants carry a sacred ethic about how a man conducts himself: show up early, work your fingers to the bone, don’t complain, and keep your mouth shut unless its to say “thank you” or “how can I help you?” Don’t strut. People from the “old country” don’t strut, unless they want to get slapped by mama. Thats how this town got built.
For all the obnoxious swagger of the New York character, we don’t like arrogance in our athletes. We lionize players like Patrick Ewing. Messier. Oakley. Lamotta. Dykstra. Billy Martin. Jackie Robinson. Paul O’Neil. We like rough and tumble guys who get the job done, don’t complain, and throw themselves on the grenade for the team. We hold them up as archetypes, hoping to identify with them just enough to hope that one day maybe we can shine like them. If a regular, humble guy can perform to that level of excellence, then maybe someday so can I. We don’t like braggarts. That goes for Mets, Knicks, Jets, Giants, Rangers, and Staten Island Ducks.
Reggie showed up in the 70’s talking that smack about how he was “the straw that stirs the drink”, and we promptly put the crown on Munson for giving him a smack down in public. Tell the truth: You loved it when Billy removed Reggie from Right Field that day he didn’t run after the ball hard enough, didn’t you? You were secretly rooting for Billy when he tried to fight Reggie in the dugout, weren’t you?
If it weren’t for 3 majestic Home Runs in a row during a World Series game, Reggie would still be getting bombarded with candy bars.
A-Rod didn’t pay attention to the important thing. He thought it was all about showing up and being fabulous. His ex-girlfriend somehow forgot to talk to him about connecting with the audience. He didn’t study the culture of the people before he showed up. And we knew it the same way an employer knows when you don’t show up prepared for a job interview. Next!!!!
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In New York, you’re allowed to make mistakes, if you know how to be sincere in your humility when busted. You can rob the people blind here if you know how to answer for it.
Where do you think Bill Clinton set up shop after he stepped down from the White House? Yep. 125th street.
When Pettite got busted the same day as Clemens, he put his head down, said, “I’m sorry, I screwed up”, and we said, “how’s your splitter working today?”
Clemens took out a page in the NY Times…never mind. I can’t even write this %&@%! paragraph without shaking my head.
Stop trying to hit all those home runs and give us something to admire. You don’t have to be sinless to become beloved in NYC. You just have to be humble.
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You see, when you’re that good, fans want to love you. We’re looking for any excuse to forgive you.
Please, We beg you.
Give us an excuse to love you!
Stop trying to hit all those home runs and give us something to admire.
You don’t have to be sinless to become beloved in NYC. You just have to be humble.
Humility elevates a commoner to a King in this town.
Remember when Mickey Mantle was dying, and he went on TV and admitted he was too drunk to remember his Triple Crown season? How he regretted his life, not being a better father, etc? That was better than a Triple Crown. That was an MVP & Cy Young & HOF all rolled into one. Nobody better say anything bad about Mickey Mantle in New York.
This holds true all across the land of sports. The problem of cheating in sports is really a bigger problem. Its the scourge of sociopathy growing like a dark plague across middle earth. Everybody scrambles to figure out how to punish the perpetrators, but everybody forgets that the perpetrators aren’t these kids.
The way talented young athletes are coddled and trained from the age of 12 on is the culprit. How would you like to be told that your only value in this world is the numbers you put up on the board? And when you discover that so long as you keep scoring for your school, you get to keep your scholarship and the girls and maybe that car (shhhhhhh!!!) and do whatever you want, that’s called teaching a person that they don’t have to follow the same rules in this world. So imagine the shock when suddenly you’re being held accountable. We call a person like that a “sociopath.” Newsflash: Sociopaths are made, not born.
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It’s not that athletes like A-Rod don’t know that its “wrong” to cheat, or to lie, or to keep lying. It’s that they have been conditioned to know that its okay to do what’s “wrong” because what’s “wrong” for “regular” people doesn’t count for them. Don’t believe me? Go ahead, visit a major university and try meeting with the football players. I’ve worked for 2 prominent Division 3 College Basketball schools (FIT, COFC), and one Big 10 Football School (University of Texas). Think the players there aren’t protected, coddled, treated like they are “special,” “above accountability,” and passed through school without being forced to excel academically or, better yet, become good citizens? Think again.
Think your stats can save you from a warped character? Ask Pete Rose about that one.
Spring is upon us, and so far A-Rod has stepped in the box and taken one swing: his big apology to the fans. He must be using one of those aluminum bats because even though he got the words right, all you could hear was this big hollow sound. That’s the difference between Little League and the Big Leagues: we like the sound of the crack of the bat. Put some wood on it, dude! So, because we’re New Yorker’s, we get to reply:
Dear Alex:
We don’t want to hear it. We’re not going from last years season-long class act to this clown show you want to bring. Forget it. You have ONE and only ONE chance to become a GREAT Yankee, only ONE way to get a monument in the hearts of Yankee fans, and that’s to do something no one has EVER done before.
We’ve had home run hitters.
We’ve got all the championships we need.
We’ve got our hit king Captain America Shortstop with the SI Cover-Girl Fiance.
We’ve heard enough words from you, and, as for hitting, well, there’s no more hitting for you to do, Arod. Too late. Every Yankee knows, even if it can’t be said out loud, this is a rebuilding year. When you let Cano and Roberston walk away for nobodies, the hand-writing’s on the wall: we’re not really trying to win it all this year. I mean, it would be nice, but, lets be honest. The last time we needed your bat to get into the playoffs, you were busy plotting a take-down of the Yankees with your lawyers.
You’re nothing special to us. If you want to be remembered as one of the Great Yankees, there’s only this: show up, tell the world that you don’t really know who you are, that you’re (at least) too embarrassed to even know how to act now, and that you don’t really know how to redeem yourself.
Try some sincere vulnerability. That would be something new. While you’re at it, renounce all of your records as well as claims to “Milestone” bonuses. When that 3,000th hit comes (and it will, even if you’re in a wheelchair when it happens), and that 715th home run, inform us in advance that you will not talk about it or drag us through any celebrations, and that any money that comes from it will go into a fund set up to teach ethics and social skills to student athletes. Invest in establishing mentoring programs for them. Turn yourself into a professional Good Guy. Then go away quietly and dedicate yourself to a new life of lifting up the voiceless. There’s still time for you to gain a monument in our hearts, A-Rod. It just ain’t on the field.
Shave your head and become a renunciate. Hitting a baseball is easy for you. We all know that. Do something that’s hard for you. We’ll love you for that.
Personally, I don’t think you’ve got the sand. But I’m still pulling for you, and you know why? Because I’ve got teenage nephews in Brooklyn that are watching.
Do something worth admiring. Do it for them. I beg you.
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Photo Credit: Associated Press/File