A-Rod A-Clown and A-Lone
By lefty
The Anti-Alex Rodriguez fan club is growing fast. It's latest spokesman is Boston Red Sox outfielder Trot Nixon. Nixon has called A-Rod "a clown" and said "…when people ask me about the Yankees, I tell them about (Derek) Jeter and Bernie Williams and (Jorge) Posada. I don't tell them about Rodriguez. ... He can't stand up to Jeter in my book or Bernie Williams or Posada."
Earlier in the off-season, Red Sox hurler Curt Schilling had called A-Rod’s infamous "slap play" a "bush-league" move.
The Anti-A-Rod club may include some Yankees as well. The New York Daily News ran this story on their site today in which they call A-Rod the "Lone ex-Ranger." He’s apparently not getting a lot of love from his Yankee teammates. This lack of support goes back to the Yankees collapse to the Red Sox in last year's ALCS. After that game, Derek Jeter made a remark that this Yankee team didn’t have the same type of players that the winning teams had in the late 1990’s. Most astute listeners thought this was a jab aimed at Rodriguez. Now, in response to Nixon's comments, Jeter said "I've been here my whole career, so the Yankees, you go out there and do things the right way. You take into consideration the team before you take into consideration yourself. We're all about winning." Jeter is known to call the team a "family" and has recently extended his best wishes to the embattled Jason Giambi — saying Giambi deserves the team's support for the very reason that "he's one of us." Yet Jeter does not offer the same defense to A-Rod. What he's NOT saying says a lot. It sounds like Jeter thinks A-Rod is a selfish, egotistical loser.
Nixon made his comments in response to an interview A-Rod gave in which he said he works out 6 hours a day in the off-season starting at 6:00 am while other players are sleeping and taking care of their kids. "He said he's doing all this while 600 players are still in their beds," Nixon said defending himself and other pro-ball fathers who don’t want to be deadbeat dads.
My question is this: Why is A-Rod so anxious to prove how hard and strenuous his workout routine is? Is he trying to cover something up in this age of Steroid fever? And, if he's NOT using steroids to bulk up, then why not come right out and say so very clearly? Look at A-Rod's numbers and his body shape and draw your own conclusions. Today's New York Times called Rodriguez a "star increasingly strapped with authenticity issues." Perhaps A-Rod will end up as yet another pretty-faced, Popeye-armed poster boy for Baseball's systemic "authenticity issues" of the last decade or so. Get your souvenirs now, kids - before we start referring to this phony as "A-Roid."
Click here for the original Trot Nixon story.
Click here for a story on how the Yankees will let A-Rod respond to the Red Sox.
