The Sports Truth

Here’s the question: Was Alex Rodriguez threatening Yankees fans with his comments that they could actually boo him out of town? Or was he teasing them with the attractive possibility?

“It’s a do or die situation,” he said on WFAN-AM’s “Mike and the Mad Dog” show. “Either New York is going to kick me out of New York this year, say ‘I’ve had enough of this guy, get him the hell out of here,’ and we have an option. Or New York is going to say, ‘Hey, we won a world championship, you had a big year, you were a part of it and we want you back.’”

Wow. Who knew fans had such control over a player? Moreover, who knew an accomplished athlete would allow the common ticket holder to decide his fate? ARod sure is a sweetheart.

Until he took back those weird comments later in the same interview:

“I want to 100 percent stay in New York. Period. That’s it. I don’t know how many ways I can say it.”

Well, one way would be to avoid making the original statement, in which you made it sound like blame would fall on the fans who booed your underachieving glove and bat if you took your player’s option and skipped town after the 2007 season.

It’s hard to know what we make of Rodriguez. He’s never been fully embraced by the Yankees or their fans - yet he plays hard, puts up solid numbers, cedes the ledership role to Derek Jeter. But at the end of the day, he sounds like a politician yearning for your cheers.

And a bad one at that.

Posted in Alex Rodriguez