Chipping away at a statue is never easy
-
- March
- 17
Men’s Vogue has a paint-by-numbers story on Alex Rodriguez. He’s talented! He’s insecure! He doesn’t get along with Jeter! He hates Boras! There are also some nice photographs of Alex on a yacht.
I’m not sure that anybody has written the definitive story on A-Rod and I’m not sure anybody ever will. Richard Ben Cramer is working on a book and I suspect that will be revealing. Perhaps he is the one who will crack the case.
As great a player as Alex is, and he may he one of the best two or three ever, he never lets anybody inside. In some ways, I can’t blame him. He has been getting bad press for years now.
But look at kids like Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes. Joba invited the world to meet his dad last season and the environment he came from, warts and all. Phil talks back to the fans via his blog and wants you to get to know him.
People respect Alex. They love Joba and Phil. There’s a difference. You don’t know Jeter but most everybody thinks he’s a good guy. Shouldn’t Alex have that?
In 2022 or so, Alex will get into the Hall of Fame. Will 10,000 people load up the RVs and pack the kids into the car to drive up to Cooperstown to cheer him? Or will they say “Yep, damn good player” and flip the channel?
It’s probably too late now as Alex has his routine down to a science. He hits his home runs, gives his stock answers then plugs in the earphones and walks away. Still, I hope that changes. Baseball fans should want to really like the best player most of them will ever see.
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on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 9:38 pm by Peter Abraham.
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Peter Abraham
We all love ALEX !
I for one will be there at his induction ceremony. He may go in as the best of all time, how could I not want to be there for that?
I have Cramer’s book on DiMaggio. It’s a good read.
Now that I moved to the NY Capital Region…I’ll be at Cooperstown for all of the Yankee inductions.
I still think that Alex is one big postseason moment from having Yankee fans love him. One big hit, one big HR and the fans will embrace him fully.
Everybody has there eccentricities.
Everybody loves the fresh face…Joba, Hughes, IPK capture the imagination because they are young, appear to have great talent, have shown great promise and are in the “gee I’m just happy to be here” phase of their careers. They are the media darlings and fan favorites because the expectations are high and they have not really disappointed anyone yet.
Once they hit a tough stretch on the hill, maybe do something foolish that young men in their 20’s with lots of money tend to do and perhaps suffer from a misquote by a well or not-so-well meaning media scribe..the gloves come off, the fans turn on them a little and they retreat to the stock, safe answers that get them through the day.
Damon is a loveable and smart character, Jeter is the media-master…Arod is not and never will be.
If I was a rookie in NY, I know who I would emulate.
I’ve read that ARod was pretty open early in his career. It wasn’t until he signed the Rangers contract and started getting horrible press that he stopped talking.
Everytime he says something revealing he gets grief for it. How many times have people in the press told him he should just “shut up and play”?
I hope that 20 years after he retires he writes an autobiography. That would be interesting.
In the meantime, let’s see how open Phil and Joba are after 15 years of media scrutiny before we hold them up as an example to ARod.
My stepson – he’s a mere 20 years old – doesn’t quite get it when I tell him that many years from now, he’ll be telling his son, with pride, that he used to go to the old Yankee Stadium to watch Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez play ball. Much like older men now talk of seeing Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, or Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle (who I did see play ball).
I love Alex & I’m thrilled he will spend the rest of his amazing career in Yankee pinstripes. No one with the slightest bit of intelligence could blame him for holding back with the media. Why should he tell them anything – they haven’t earned the privilege. The media (NY media in particular) ridicules & over analyzes anything that comes out of his mouth.
Dana:
Earn what privilege? What does that mean?
See, Dana, I don’t write my stories for myself. I write them for you. Presumably, you’d like to know something about a player you like so much. Otherwise baseball might as well be played by nine robots.
GMan: I disagree with you about Joba abd Phil. Their personalities are not like that. I’m not talking about their answers to questions. They’re just standing around BS’ing good guys. That part doesn’t change. I guarantee you that 15 years from now, Phil and Joba won’t be much different.
I’ll be at Cooperstone for him and Mariano Rivera
I like A-Rod. I feel very fortunate to have seen him, Jeter and Mariano play.
Pete have to disagree with you on this one. Some people are better off keeping work related issue as impersonal and distant.
ARod is one of them – when he was trying to “show” people who he was as a person “inside” it turned out to be a circus and hurt his performance.
Last year when he basically put on his ipod and stopped trying to explain himself he went back to playing the way he can.
Some people just aren’t natural with some things. It’s not a fit for them.
With ARod – the less said the better. I don’t think him opening up is going to help – it will turn back into a circus and only hurt him in the long run.
If no one gets to know the “real story” of ARod that’s fine. As a fan I could personally care less.
When he’s ignoring the outside world he may be one of the 5 best players to ever play.
That’s more than enough.
Ted Williams was never truly “loved” either. He never achieved the type of relationship with fans that other superstars did. A .1200 OPS in 1941 makes up for a lot, however.
You “guarantee” they won’t change in 15 years? Really?
You weren’t around ARod when he was in his first major league season, right? I can’t believe that he hasn’t changed, and I respectfully disagree with your guarantee – I think it’s likely Joba and Phil will change in some ways (hey, they’re only 21-22). How they will change, I certainly can’t say, not having your precognition skills, but I’d bet money they change.
We get a lot less of the real Derek Jeter than we do of the real A-Rod, and he has gotten grief and every time he’s opened up. Jeter seems to be the one with more canned answers.
I love both of them, so I’m not throwing stones, but A-Rod’s popularity difficulties seem to come down to chemistry and the criticisms that huge amounts of money seem to draw, not his canned answers to the press. He’s not a fitting in kind of guy, and he suffers for it.
Anyway, if anyone is going to get me to Cooperstown, A-Rod is it.
Alex is like Michael Jordan, John Elway, Peyton Manning and other stars who rarely get a fair shake in the press until they win a championship.
Jordan was ripped as a selfish, one dimensional player until the Bulls won. Elway and Manning “couldn’t win the big one”, ….until they did.
Arod; “great stats, bad in the playoffs”. The conventional wisdom media has written this scenario and is invested in it. This will not change until the Yanks win again with Arod.
Earn what privilege? What does that mean?
Privilege= respect, trust etc.. Come on Pete what has the media done to earn, yes earn Alex’s trust. The media has tortured him since he came here (he’s not friends w/ Jeter, he tries to hard, he doesn’t care enough, he cares too much, the list goes on and on). Why on earth would he be open with the media (fans)?
I highly doubt if Alex keeps going the way he is that in 2022 when he gets into the HOF that people are just going to change the channel instead of watching/celebrating one of baseball’s greats.
What more does Alex need to share with us? We know he isn’t perfect that he’s a bit awkward, sometimes puts his foot in his mouth, is still over coming some of his childhood issues, he has been to counseling, he works his butt off in pursuit of his goals, he is close to his family, he learns the hard way most of the time, he is resilient and doesn’t give up easily.
Elle,
I love that line, “he’s not a fitting-in kind of guy”. That’s perfect.
I think it was SJ44 or somebody who was saying that aside from being a baseball god, Alex is basically a nerd. Generally jocks and sportswriters don’t like nerds. I, however, do.
I will definitely be at Cooperstown for his induction. In fact, I think I’ll make my reservation at the Otsega hotel the day he retires.
how can you compare a bunch of rookies to a 15 year veteran? you don’t think playing for that long will harden you even a little bit?
when a-rod first burst onto the MLB scene, he was baseball’s golden child, not the media pariah that he’s become now. over time, due to a combination of various things (the big contract, the rehearsed answers), he’s become a nice target for writers to pick on, and while it’s understandable why the media would get on his case about even the most trivial of things, you have to figure after a certain point that you guys are simply the ones perpetuating his negative image. i mean, the guy is doing an interview for men’s vogue, for cripe’s sake, and you’re dogging on his personality fom what you’re reading? and on top of that, you’re comparing him to a bunch of youthful kids who are just excited to even be up in th majors?
sorry, but your bias shows through, and unfortunately, your opinions on a-rod don’t speak for a lot of us.
Clare,
Thank you! Yes, I love his nerdiness. It makes me happy in a way maybe I shouldn’t discuss in Pete’s comments
Baseball doesn’t tend to reward those who aren’t good back-of-the-bus rowdy guys, (just look at Jim Bouton even before Ball Four was published!) but when those guys are as good as A-Rod, they can’t ignore them either.
That’s a horrible article. It doesn’t seem as though they actually talked to Alex. They just pieced things together from prior articles. The Jeter thing is old, anyway. Alex said this spring that they’re like they were when they were kids, again.
I LOVE Alex, and when he’s inducted I’ll get tickets any way I can.
The stories that have been written about Joltin Joe and the distance he kapt from not only the press but his teammates as well….Granted the scrunity of today’s media is far more invasive than in Joe D’s day, but A-Rod gets alot of bad ink….Must be that True Yankee myth…..
This is hard to explain, I guess.
I don’t want A-Rod to tell the media everything. But …well, this is an example.
When Jeter (or most any other player) meets with the media before of after the game, they stand there, take questions, answer them and when nobody has anything left to ask, they says something like “We all set? OK, thanks.” or “see you tomorrow” or whatever.
Alex will answer 2 or 3 questions and suddenly walk away. Not a word, he just walks away. And this is after games when he’s hit 2 homers or won the game or whatever. When the questions are all positive. He just looks up the air and walks away.
It’s so … I don’t know, weird. I’m under no misconception that Jeter likes the media. But he treats people with civility. You walk by him, he says hello. Stuff like that. He was raised to be a decent human being, like most people.
I’m not saying Alex is a bad guy. I don’t think he is. He’s just … weird. It’s like he doesn’t have the gene for casual banter.
I feel badly for him because 99 percent of the fans in the country think he’s a greedy jackass. Blindly loyal Yankee fans love him, of course. That’s what fans do. It’s just too bad he can’t act a little more normally because I think he’d get a break from more people in the media and that would improve his public image.
It’s not Boras. Damon has Boras as a client. Alex just somewhere along the way became the A-Rodinator 2000. He hits, he plugs in his ear phones, he walks out. Even his teammates shake their heads.
You know how he’s always talking about Robbie and Melky, how he mentors them, etc. From the day the season ended to the start of sprintg training he never spoke to either of those guys once. Doesn’t that strike you as weird?
It’s too bad. I’d like to see the best player in the game be somebody people want to root for. I get the sense that Yankee fans root for him because of the uniform he’s wearing. Had he opted out and gone to Anaheim, he would be public enemy No. 1 in New York and every single one of you would hate his guts. He’s the ultimate “root for the laundry” player.
Sorry to ramble on.
Here is where you’re wrong Peter. You can’t speak for the fans. He’s not a root for the laundry player.
You have made it clear that you don’t like him, but even with everything the fans know about him being filtered through reporters like you, we still like him.
It’s not just me, just about every Yankee fan I know likes him. My Dad loves him. He watches the games and loves the way he plays hard every play, and loves his head-first slides into second.
You say he doesn’t act normally. I have two responses to that:
1) With all due respect, I don’t trust your opinion on this. You have exposed your bias too often on this blog for me to believe anything negative you write about ARod, especially something as amorphous and subjective as he’s “weird.”
2) If he would act “normally” to the press, given how he’s been treated, he would tell all of you to go Cheney yourselves.
And I disagree with your premise that if he acted normally the press would give him a break. I highly doubt it. When you don’t like someone, you tend to interpret everything negatively. For example, in Verducci’s 2006 article he portrayed ARod’s wearing a suit when Red Sox brass came by his hotel room at midnight while they were negotiating as weird and “too polished.” My take would be that he was showing respect. When you have a business meeting, you wear a suit, not your pajamas or shorts and a t-shirt. Had he worn shorts, it would be portrayed as arrogant and disrespectful.
But that’s just one example of how everything he does, whatever it is, is interpreted negatively. In the media’s eyes, he will never be normal.
I think you express a very clear image Pete…A friend of mine, Richie Amaral played with him in Seattle when he first came up…..He always said that he was kind of quiet guy, who just tried to blend in….Then of course Junior was the main dude, with the big sofa chair, private corner locker, and had little time for the local media…Richie moved on to Baltimore and maybe A-Rod became Junior…..
I assure you, I love Alex. And I assure you that it’s not blind Yankee loyalty. I love him because he’s imperfect, because he’s insecure and awkward and, yes, sometimes a real jackass. LOVE him!
the NY beat reporters constant harping about A-Rod’s supposed unpopularity is i guess inevitable. the reality is that the man gets tons of endorsements; companies don’t pay those sums out out to celebrities that people are indifferent to.
the reality is that all A-Rod needs is a ring or four. that’s what will cement him as a Yankee, and will cement enthusiasm for him. the rest is just BS.
Peter,
You do realize that when you say Jeter was “raised to be a decent human being” as exemplified by his doing something ARod doesn’t, you’re implying that ARod isn’t a decent human being, right?
You state that ARod lacks the banter gene. Okay, maybe he does. Does that matter? Does that make him a less decent human being than Jeter?
If I were ARod I would never banter with the press, because odds are someone would take any casual statement and put it on the back page.
“When Jeter (or most any other player) meets with the media before of after the game, they stand there, take questions, answer them and when nobody has anything left to ask…
Alex will answer 2 or 3 questions and suddenly walk away. ”
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You just don’t get it Pete. The media has driven him away. There are far, far, far more articles and pictures of ARod then anyone else. He was once very open. Told us he was in therapy and many other of his personal feelings. But various media people need to sell their wares by writting inflamatory garbage.
If I coild advise ARod, after the way he has been treated, I would tell him to pick ONE ‘biographer’ type writer, one guy he trusts, to voice what he wants to say. I wouldn’t say a word to any other media until 2022.
There was a time when media had respect for people they covered. Everyone knew about JFK and his affairs, but nobody wrote about it because it was nothing but sensationalism. Now, the majority of media writes only sensationalism.
It’s a 2-way street, but most writers think they have a God given right to write anything they like, and pass it off as opinion. Have you read Mike Lupica recently?
Don’t defend the majority of your profession. Just try to be better then they are.
Pete,
I think it’s more of a generational difference than anything else. Growing up at a time when just about everyone in high school and college belongs to social networking sites like myspace and facebook, and personal blog pages are a major outlet for self-expression, idividuals as young as Phil Hughes and Joba have a different conception of privacy than older players and seem less reluctant to share the details of their lives with the outside world.
Sign ginormous contract….check
Ginormous contract does nothing to cure Jeter envy….check
Use magazine article to back stab Jeter….check
Blame Scott Boras for stabbing….wait!!!
Pete, I appreciate you giving us this kind of behind the scenes information and trying to help us understand why reporters seem so ready to dislike Alex. I feel kind of like you’re getting slammed for opening up in the same way that we’re all saying Alex would if he tried to open up more.
However, I really agree with Clare and OldYanksFan that everything we’ve seen in the media has convinced us that Alex cannot win with the majority of reporters, and the best course of action in that case is just to stop trying.
P.S. You can ask Jeter questions for hours on end and still not know anything about him.
Some good points, Peter. I’d slightly disagree that its nothing to do with Boras, I think he’s been a much bigger influence on Arod than he’s ever been on Johnny. I think Damon and Boras’s professional relationship, is completely different to the kind of almost codependent relationship that he had with Arod. Mostly because Arod and Damon are different people who came to him with different needs and backgrounds. Damon is more the happy-go-lucky frat boy, hes never been in need of nor looking for a father figure. Arod is more the reserved magna cum laude economics major, who just isn’t the frat boy, no matter how much he tries to be. Nothing wrong with being either type of person.
Well, I tried to explain and obviously I didn’t do it well. It’s hard to explain I guess because you only see him on the field and obviously he is great there.
Like I said, I don’t think he’s a bad guy. I just wish I could cover him better I guess.
RCK,
I hope you (and Peter) don’t think I’m slamming him here.
I think he’s wrong, at least when he says that the fans don’t like ARod. However, he’s certainly entitled to his opinion.
I actually didn’t think Peter’s original post was bad. The comments he posted went a little farther, however, which is what irked me.
But, given the topic, I thought we were actually having a surprisingly civil conversation about it.
Alex Rodriguez is here to play the game, not to be beloved. I think he has a good relationship with the fans because as he said, NY pushes him to be a better player. As fans, we get to benefit from that motivation. I feel personality wise, he’s very similar to Derek Jeter in terms of what he reveals — in fact, I’d say based on some of the goofy answers A-Rod has given, that he comes across as MORE human than Jeter, only because Jeter doesn’t seem like he even has to try to be stock and robotic with his responses, whereas with A-rod, it seems like he puts a lot of effort into it. To me, that’s funny.
Jeter is beloved not for his personality, but because he was born into the MLB system as a yankee, raised as a yankee, and won as a yankee. Fans love to root for guys who came up through the system. Maybe if Alex Rodriguez had been a yankee from start to finish, people might feel the same about him.
I’ll also go out on a limb and say 90% of the fans LOVE joba and feel okay about hughes. Hughes’ blog is awesome, but how many fans read it? Joba is a player who has exciting talent and a huge personality. He’s almost in a class by himself in that regard.
I don’t get it, either Alex is talking too much and everyone wants him to shut up and play or his answers are rehearsed and he needs to be more genuine. There truly is no winning with some people. It seems as though sports writers want Alex to spill his guts to them so that they can have a juicy story to write about.
And just curious,how do you know Alex did not speak to either Melky or Robby before ST? Didn’t Alex and Melky attended some award (Thurman Munson) before ST started?
Peter,
I actually think you cover him very well in your articles in the paper.
The good thing about blogging is that we can get your personal opinion on things, which, even though I sometimes (often?) disagree with, I still appreciate reading them.
“Alex is like Michael Jordan, John Elway, Peyton Manning and other stars who rarely get a fair shake in the press until they win a championship.”
I think you’re right, yanksrule57. I hope that changes soon, and that Alex has the dramatic blast(s) to make it happen.
Alex earned my respect long before his pinstripe days due to his work ethic. If a guy busts his butt for the team I always root for him. And from what I’ve read, NO ONE works harder than Alex.
I think I get where you’re coming from Pete. I like Arod, but I dont think I”m blindly loyal to Alex so much, (I tend to agree with you that some of those behaviors stated are a bit weird and he definitely does have faults) its more than I see him getting stuff thats really spectacularly unfair – kinda he’s damned if he does, and damned if doesn’t. Oops sorry, long sentence. Yes, he does seem to be a lightning rod, and sometimes doesn’t help his cause, but in some ways I really can understand a bit why he is the way he is.
Pete’s comment reveals a lot about where much of the bad publicity comes from. A-Rod, to some degree, apparently marches to the beat of his own drummer. And as is often the case with such individuals, there are jealous cliques who don’t understand it, who expect perhaps to have their asses more kissed, and who gossip in reaction.
except in this clique’s case, the gossips each write basically the same story about it, every year, in just about every paper.
Clare’s comments on this are dead-on.
just saw Pete’s last post. Actualltt, we see & hear him do interviews, etc., too; not just on the field. A-Rod always comes across as gracious and articulate. Very intelligent guy obviously.
I think as many people have mentioned already, people like Pete are the reason why people don’t like Arod that much.
Most of us smart Yankee fans love him and accepted him as soon as he came but the whole new york media is a beast and need someone to target and unfortunately it’s Arod.
Believe me, when the day comes and he is being elected into the Hall Of Fame, thousands of us Yankee fans will drive there and cheer for the greatest player we’ve ever seen.
Clare, “slammed” was too strong a word. You’re right that people are being civil.
I was just trying to make the point that Peter is not really the problem here. He doesn’t seem to go out of his way to cover A-Rod in a negative way, and I appreciate the insight that he’s giving us into why many others do.
I do still agree that Peter is reflecting the bias of the culture surrounding him. Every profession has its stock assumptions, and unfortunately, for the NY sports writers theirs include a lot of negativity toward Alex Rodriguez.
And, you know, some of it is certainly based in reality, but that doesn’t make me any less of an A-Rod fan. As I said above, I like his flaws. Perfection is not a prerequisite for me to be a fan of somebody.
I don’t have a problem with what Pete is saying here at all. Alex is an oddity, for lack of a better term. It’s not that he’s a bad guy, and Pete has stressed that. He’s an interesting case, that’s all. And I think what Peter is attempting to do is simply explore the question of why one of the best baseball players we may ever see is so different with the public and the media. Given the understanding that not all players are going to be as accessible or “user-friendly” as the last/next one, these are still intriguing questions.
Somehow, and at some point, the walls went up with Alex. Seeing how the tabloids (note that I didn’t use the blanket term of “media”)have pounced on every opportunity to expose chinks in his armor, it’s understandable that ARod would pull back a bit and feel it to be difficult to trust everyone easily. He came up as one of the most heralded prospects in the last 15 years at a very young age. He signed that monster contract with Texas that made him even more “high profile”. I’m not saying anyone should feel sorry for him by any means – and I doubt ARod would think anyone should either. He’s got a life most of us would kill for…except for the constant pressure and expectations, having the smallest of your sins blown up to the size of mountains in the “bad” press, being labeled greedy, blah blah blah. My point is that he has things like the latter ones there in his life that make it difficult for him to be fully vulnerable in public.
We have to look at the strides Alex has made over the last couple of years and see them as progress towards this transformation that Pete has suggested he’d like to see (”Like I said, I don’t think he’s a bad guy. I just wish I could cover him better I guess.”). He became a team player last year – it was clear that he was gelling with his teammates and having fun. He’s learned (slowly) when to speak and when not to in the press. He’s got a little ways to go there yet, but he’s definitely gotten better. Then the much-publicized shift in his relationship with Boras and the decision to negotiate his own contract were huge steps forward in what I seem to recall Pete himself referring to here as “becoming his own man”. I couldn’t have agreed more when that all went down. He took a huge grasp of control on his own life in the last year.
Anyway, I think for those of us (myself included) that would like to see ARod become more like the Jeters and Damons of the world, we need to realize that it’s going to happen in stages if it’s going to at all. I personally think it’s possible – or even probable, based on those changes he’s made recently.
Humor me for a minute here while I make a quick comparison. This is before the time of a lot of posters here, but I think those that are over 30 will be able to remember and understand this story. In 1996, Van Halen attempted to reunite with original singer David Lee Roth. It was a huge deal on MTV and everywhere else – they played John Sebastian’s “Welcome Back” while the band walked out on the stage at the MTV awards. Roth was always a mouth that was in his own world – and you either loved him or you hated him. It was that personality trait that led to them breaking up to begin with (anybody remember “Dave TV – all day, all night”?) So when they made the announcement, Roth immediately launched into Diamond Dave mode and stole the spotlight. The reunion announcement was only minutes old and you could already see the discomfort and disgust on the faces of the other band members. Well, rumor has it that before they went out on stage, Ed Van Halen said to Roth, “Baby steps, Dave. Baby steps…”. Roth didn’t listen, and the reunion was over as fast as it started.
Anyway, that’s kind of an odd parallel to bring up, but I think for those of us that would like to see ARod morph into a more unguarded and personable public figure, it’s all about the “baby steps”.
I just want to thank Pete for the frank insight he has provided here.
Holy crap – don’t tell me the post I just spent 15 minutes on didn’t go through ….
Yeah Pete you wish you could coer him better right? and back stab him everytime you feel like it also?…
I think A-Rod does the right thing not talking to reporters as much. What do you want him to do share with stuff like how his daughter is doing in school, or even better yet his intimate life?
Pete grow up, and stop bashing people you oviously dislike, why don’t you write the same for Jeter not on the lack of communication but on the lack of onnesty. Everyboy knows Jeter only says what is ovious and not what is in his mind. But like always Pete, you pick on the ones that are already down in the public eye in a way, like you did with Shelley. But it didnt work this time Pete.
Yeah:
Your e-mail address ends in .edu which suggests you attend college. Must be a trade school based on the spelling errors and complete lack of sense your posts makes.
Right, I want to know how his daughter did in school. That’s the exact point of my post.
I can’t decipher what the rest of what you wrote means. But, um, whatever you say.
Meanwhile, George, what endorsements does Alex have? He has Dick’s Sporting Goods. Beyond that I’ve never seen him in a commericial.
Of course I would go see Arod get’s into the HOF, hellooooo??? He’s one of the best, maybe when it’s all said and done the best player of all time. Can you blame him for being guarded? People since he was a kid have put these crazy expectations on him. When he does something great everyone goes of course cause that’s what he should do, when he doesn’t live up those expectations he’s a bum. People expect more from him than guys like a Joba or Hughes or even Jeter. Everyone should just enjoy this guy, stop stressing. I don’t like Arod any less than Jeter. Love my Yankees.
Wolf in Pinstripes,
It wasn’t lost! I just read your post, and I agree that ARod is an interesting case.
I don’t know, however, if people really want ARod to be more open and personable. I think a lot of people don’t want that. We like our sports stars larger than life. I think a lot of people really didn’t want to know that ARod saw a therapist, for example.
I don’t want him to open up (at least not til long after he’s retired) because I believe it only provides more grist for the mill and more fodder for the media to misinterpret.
And I also have to disagree with your distinction between the media and the tabloids. The NYTimes, for example, is among the worst of the ARod bashers (especially before Selena Roberts left). In 2006 the NYTimes had articles filled with obnoxious psycho-babble about the books in his locker, his tone of voice when he was saying all the right things about being batted sixth in the playoffs, and his “complicated mind games” vs. Jeter’s ability to read the teleprompter on SNL (when ARod wasn’t even on SNL). So, really, it’s not just the tabloids. Almost everyone in the media has ARod issues.
I disagree with this criticism.
A-Rod is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. After what he went through with the media last year with the Toronto incident, I don’t fault him at all for not treating the media with the civility you might expect. He was having one of the best seasons any Yankee has ever had, but reporters needed to look into his personal life instead of writing a piece comparing him to Mickey or Joe or Babe.
What I really disagree with in this post is the idea that you want him to change so that baseball fans all over the country can want to like the best player they have ever seen. First of all, that will never happen. The Yankees are portrayed as the bad guys and A-Rod, as the best and highest paid player, is the biggest target of them all.
It looks like your complaining about a guy you have to deal with on a regular basis that isn’t as civil as you would like. I complain about these people all the time. My Finance teacher is a total d*ck and could easily make things easier on the students without taking anything away from the class but chooses not to. When I do complain, I don’t pretend that I am doing it as a selfless gesture to try to make things better for other people in the class. It’s cause I hate dealing with him.
And about your point about Yankees fans not liking A-Rod if he went to the Angels, how many fans would cheer for a guy who was their best player for 4 years and went to your 2nd biggest rival after opting out of the richest contract in American sports history?
Peter,
ARod had that great Pepsi commercial (where he was driving the truck) and that Nike billboard. I’ve seen those two and I don’t usually read magazines or watch commercials, so I’m sure I haven’t seen everything he’s done.
One more thing…
There’s another athlete who was at the top of his sport, clearly the best player of his era who did what he could to keep his private life private and not give reporters much more than the standard paint by numbers answers. A-Rod hasn’t enjoyed his success on the championship level yet, can you guess who I’m talking about?
By the way, it’s REALLY interesting how different the media covered this player compared to A-Rod in terms of good vs bad press.
I’ve seen Arod in commericals for Pepsi(a couple of them including the one when he drives the truck), a deodorant(where a fan goes only two hrs Alex? If I remember right)…also for Nike (included other athletes including Maria Sharopova). Those are the ones I remember, it’s late so I could be forgetting.
Okay, first off. Pete what about nike from last year.
Second: Feel free to disagree with me, I don’t think you like him and honestly you don’t cover him well. Look at your orginal post, look at he way you wrote it. Seriously you cannot expect we the readers to accept that as fair.
This is your blog, feel free to write whatever.
Thirdly, i don’t know if you went to college or not and I am not trying to insult you. I just don’t know, I don’t know your life story, but any GED person like jamie spears can definately tell what yeah is saying.
PS: We the fans have seen arod being interviewed by reports at spring training and at the stadium without the camera lights being on. We know what the deal is.
This is kind-of relevant to the discussion we were having earlier about fitting in. I found this section of an article on Josh Hamilton really sad:
“A day or two later, after the Rangers worked out, Kinsler invited him to grab a salad at a local bakery. Nothing really big there, except that Hamilton says it’s the first time any professional teammate ever invited him for a meal.”
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/baseball/rangers/stories/031708dnsporanglede.3c433c2.html
Hamilton’s another player I’m fascinated by, and I hope he stays clean and has a great year.
But that also makes me wonder about the clubhouse culture. In my world, when traveling with colleagues you regularly go out to dinner together. You don’t have to be best friends, it’s just common courtesy when the alternative is eating room service by yourself.
Unless Hamilton’s the exception, it doesn’t sound like it works that way in baseball.
Wow, lots went on here tonight, surprisingly civil as A-rod’s always been a lighting rod.
Pete, I totally get where you’re coming from. If what you’re saying about Alex just walking away from people without saying anything, then there’s something amiss or something missing. That has nothing to do with contracts, money, shyness, or anything else. Either something’s missing or he totally has no respect for people.
You don’t have to be born with good graces, raised with good manners, or be oozing with charisma to be engaging. You greet people, smile, listen, look people in the eye, make small talk, say goodbye and move on. EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO FAKE IT. At least act like you respect others.
Now it could be that he hates you media guys, sees the beat writers as a necessary evil and obligation, or just doesn’t respect your craft. But if he treats the beat writers like that he shouldn’t wonder why they find him disingenuous and can find precious little to write about him in a positive light.
I’ll cheer for him because he’s a Yankee. Just because he’s one of the best 3 players in all time doesn’t mean I have to love the guy, but I’ll give him all the respect he deserves.
They don’t call ARod “Lighting-Rod” for nothing.
I’ll go to his HOF induction, if my calendar is clear in 2022, just to see the “talent” in the audience.
I’m trade student from the Dominican Republic just started learning the language Pete. And since when did this become a gramma blog?….
Pete,
I had a roommate at school just like ARod: often, in the middle of a conversation, he’d stand up and leave without a word. Didn’t make him a bad person, but didn’t make him my friend either. I understand why the writers can get frustrated when they cover him.
That said, as a fan, I love him because of what he is: a seemingly flawless deity with very human flaws. In a way, I can relate to him, because he’s a human being.
And when examining his personality, keep his background in mind. He was the #1 HS player in America in baseball and football, and I’m sure things came very easily to him at that age. But he completely missed out on college and the minor leagues and was thrust, at the age of 19, into a workplace environment with people much older than him looking to him for leadership. He never truly learned how to relate to people his own age, and he spent his early 20s (and all the time since then) struggling to fulfill his place as a reluctant leader. Look at other athletes thrown into similar roles: for every Willie Mays, Moses Malone, Wayne Gretzky or Griffey Jr., there’s a Kobe Bryant, Jermaine O’Neal, or Dwight Gooden. The list of players who broke through early and struggled socially can go on and on: Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle, Strawberry, Pedro, etc. Last I checked, Jose Reyes isn’t making many friends in Flushing. ARod’s underdeveloped social skills should not surprise anyone, and they should not lead anybody (teammates, reporters or fans) to think any less of him, especially when he exerts so much effort on and off the field.
smll school-
I had a roommate at school just like ARod: often, in the middle of a conversation, he’d stand up and leave without a word.
sounds like your friend had ADD or ADHD
Great players haven’t always been open, for example, Ted “chip on his shoulder” Williams, Joe “stoic” Dimaggio, and Roger Maris
a-rod is a product of the times. why should a guy who feels paranoid and betrayed by the media open up? like so many gangstas, he keeps things close to home, and i’m fine with that. in all honesty i’m curious how guys like hank aaron and babe ruth would be treated in this day and age. america’s two favorite things to do are build people up and knock ‘em down. seems like alex might not let us get that far.
I can see the similarities between A-Rod and DiMaggio, obsessed with money, concerned about seeming better than he was, all because he was ashamed about his home life and, in A-Rod’s case, confused about who he was after his father left the family when he was a boy.
Rod strikes me as someone who was always too self-conscious, too concerned about what others thought of him because he didn’t know what to think of himself. The talent and success in athletics gave him an identity, not unlike most other pro athletes, but it’s a veneer, not a fully functioning personality. In some ways, A-Rod is another DiMaggio, aware that he is a personna, not a person, and a prisoner of that personna, believing it more attractive and worthy than his actual self, too invested in it to let it go suddenly.
His male role model for a good chunk of his formative years? Scott Boras. I think that says a lot about what A-Rod felt he didn’t have but needed: power, a commanding presence, and the kind of money that made his flawed childhood into a mountain he climbed on the way to success instead of an embarrassment.
When he jettisoned Boras he signaled that he is ready to move on to the next phase of Defining A-Rod. His comments about the Jeter situation last spring were almost healthy, except that he didn’t give Jeter a heads up. But I guess that’s pay back for Jeter freezing him out. I suspect that if you study A-Rod carefully there are a lot of paybacks and dramatic score settling moments. Deep down there’s got to be an angry, lonely kid still searching for his daddy’s approval. No matter how healthy he ever gets, that’ll still be there, driving him to hit yet another home run, that moment when the voice inside his head says “look daddy, your boy did it again.”
I respect Jeter as a great athlete, but I personally like and root for Arod more, because I find Arod more human. I think Alex, given his background, could have had a million excuses not to succeed, but he worked harder than anyone to get to where he is today. I wish him well.
Pete is right about the earphones and the rehearsed speeches. I hope with his 10-year contract here, he will finally settle in, feel home in NY, and loosen up a bit. Arod said himself, NY is the toughest when things are tough, but also the best when you finally get through the rough patches. I don’t think there is a larger or better stage out there to help Alex get over his demons and insecurities than he eventually will here in NY.
Every team is made up of 25 individuals with various personalities ranging from an obliging Derek Jeter down to a snarling Randy Johnson with A-Rod somewhere in-between.
Obviously Peter and his peers would prefer that a high profile player like Alex would give them more time with quality things to write but a best guess is that somewhere in his career either in Seattle or Texas, some media member rubbed him the wrong way and ever since he’s put up a wall very difficult to penetrate.
Pete,
I recognize that sometimes you write things on this blog to provoke discussion among the bloggers.
However, on A-Rod what you wrote is beyond provoking discussion. In spite of what you write now that you do not dislike A-Rod, you have shown beyond doubt that you dislike him and like many other media folks bashed him for nothing. Do you remember last year when you were too cricitcal of him for nothing called him underdog for no reason and when many on the blog got on your case you reluctantly stopped criticising A-Rod regularly.
Again, you go overboard in your criticism of A-Rod and use Jeter how he should be. May be you should look at the facts a little bit. Nationwide, A-Rod is favored better than Jeter. You want proof? Look at who gets top votes for all star games. He is always voted in by fans and is among the top vote getters, where as Jeter made some of his appearances courtesy to Joe Torre!
Regarding his spending time with media, I do not know why we should trust you, when what we see is different. In the YES post game shows, he sits there and answers every guestion that is asked. Not only that, he is available for such interviews much more frequently than Jeter does. This is not a knock on Jeter.
In any case, it is intersting to see that almost every one on the blog disagrees with you. That should say something!!!!
Pete i cant disagree more on this people love him or hate him not respect! and when he is inducted to the hall of fame if he has a few rings coopers town will be fuller then ever
Pete, well said, I know what you’re saying. He is just a little weird. I think SJ44 said someone he talked to said he was just kind of nerdy. I think he’s a bit socially awkward and that’s a tough thing to change. I get the sense that he would like to be more casual and naturally interactive, but it just doesn’t come to him as easily as baseball does.
I don’t think I’ll ever love him. I’ll root for him, marvel at him, and feel a little bad for him, despite his billions.
Pete, i don’t have a list of endorsements offhand, it’s not something i’ve documented. but i see him all the time.
off the top of my head, i know he has, or has had, Radio Shack endorsements, Pepsi endorsements – such as the commercials w/Vlad Guerrerro, and then then he has an ad for some TV brand – not sure if it’s actual televisions, or for a cable/satelite network, but in the ad he’s rounding the bases and points towards CF/the camera as he rounds second.
and then, his home page lists some ‘corporate partners’:
http://www.mlb.com/players/rodriguez_alex/about.jsp?category=links
How can anyone blame Arod for being too careful with the media (and indirectly to the fans)? Just look at the most recent example:
Arod wanted to say something nice about his teammate…”I think Derek is in great shape, he will have an MVP SEASON.”
Media turned that around into “Arod said Jeter will win the MVP.”
Jeter is told Arod predicted he would win the MVP, and said “I don’t care about winning MVP, I want to win championships.”
Just like that, the story becomes the Jeter dismissed Arod, the Captain is a team player whereas Arod only cares about MVPs.
Now, how can anyone blame the guy for the ipod??!!
None of us can really know what it’s like to be Alex Rodriguez. I don’t have to know anything more about him than his work ethic and his abilities on the baseball field. There is no entitlement here that because he is one of the best ever, or because he makes huge amounts of money that I should expect him to be anything more than what he is or to know more about him personally. He is awkward, that is evident, in media situations. He often appears to be uncomfortable in his own skin. I wish, as a fellow human being, that he wasn’t this way, but he is. Perhaps he’ll become less so with the stability of his current contract, and more importantly, his desire to have an identity with one team.
As far as Pete’s experience with Alex, it is different than ours as fans. Pete and all sportswriters are dependent to an extent on whatever insight the players can add to their stories. It is the difference maker. Anyone can write a game summary. But what makes a story is the human element, and frankly neither Jeter nor ARod go out of their way in this regard. That they are two of the most iconic Yankees makes it particularly frustrating. Everyone wants ARod’s or Jeter’s take on a game, a play, an incident, but are never really given anything by either one. In that respect, if what they said could add to my knowledge, enjoyment or appreciation of the game, it would be nice if they were more forthcoming. But personality-wise? Who cares?
Murphydog -
I think your take on Alex is particularly interesting. No one ever gets over their childhood, if it was in any way lacking. There is always something to prove, and always someone to impress, and no amount of success makes feelings of inadequacy or inferiority go away entirely. No one is really in a position to psychoanalyze ARod, but from what little is known about him, he sure seems to have issues.
Just as an aside, I really don’t care whether Pete “likes” Alex or not.
BBFan:
That is just not true. Alex is rarely available, a source of endless frustration to the Yankees because he is their best player. You see an occasional TV interview. The postgame shows are not an indicator.
Make you a deal, starting Feb. 15, you give me $5 for every story I find with a Jeter quote in the News Post, Times and Journal News and I’ll give you $5 for every A-Rod quote.
As for the “underdog” thing, he calls himself an underdog all the time, which is just silly given how talented he is. That was what I was referring to.
“It’s so … I don’t know, weird. I’m under no misconception that Jeter likes the media. But he treats people with civility. You walk by him, he says hello. Stuff like that. He was raised to be a decent human being, like most people.
I’m not saying Alex is a bad guy. I don’t think he is. He’s just … weird. It’s like he doesn’t have the gene for casual banter.”
Hey everyone, I think Pete wrote a very insightful post and let’s not be harsh on him. I don’t think Pete’s trying to be negative at all. He’s asking some pretty interesting questions.
About what Pete wrote above…just read closer…Jeter “was raised” to be decent. That’s exactly it. While Jeter was playing ball in his suburban Jersey backyard with his mom and dad, Arod was hanging out at the Boys and Girls Club waiting for his mom to get off the night shift, wondering why his dad left. I’m not trying to be psycho babble here, but I think instead of picking on Alex for not being perfect, we should remember the odds he had to beat and how hard he must have worked to even get close to where he is.
Lots of interesting thoughts on this topic. Murph comes closest to the perspective that is more in line with who Alex really is.
I think he is like DiMaggio in a lot of ways without the inherent meaness that DiMaggio would display at times.
Both guys are not easy reads and that turns people off.
Alex is not a bad guy. Far from it. He is somewhat geeky and socially awkward but, he has a big heart. He just doesn’t let too many people in. Given what has gone on in his life, I don’t blame him.
The comparisions between he and Jeter aren’t really fair for a variety of reasons. Jeter grew up in a two parent home with a strong father and mother in his life. He had chores, accountability and stability throughout his life.
He also grew up in the Midwest. A very family oriented environment.
Arod was raised in Miami in a single parent home. His mom worked a lot and Miami is not a place for kids. Its natural for kids who grow up in Miami to be very guarded in their dealings with people. Having spent the better part of the last 25 years living in South Florida, I see that type of behavior in a great deal of the kids who grow up in South Florida. His social awkwardness is a direct byproduct of growing up in Miami.
Alex has had some solid male role models in his life. Rich Hoffman, his HS coach, is still close to Alex to this day and is a terrific human being.
More than anything else, from the time Alex was 17 years old, much like Tiger Woods, he was almost programmed for greatness due to his amazing athletic talents.
Its why, next to Tiger, I have never met anybody more concerned with how he is viewed by other people than Alex.
Just as it is for child actors, athletic prodigies don’t have it easy. Alex has it tougher than Tiger in the sense that the media are basically members of the Tiger Woods Fan Club.
Nobody in the media criticizes Tiger over how much money he makes, how he carries himself, what he says, what he does, inquire deeply into his private life, etc. In fact, if somebody criticizes Tiger (Rory Sabbatini, for example), the national media jumps on that person like he is a terrorist.
Alex doesn’t have that luxury from the media. Once he signed the Texas contract, every day became a media referendum with him. Didn’t talk to the media? He got slammed. Sounded too programmed? He got slammed.
When he got to NY, it got worse. It got personal (from some in the media) and some of that stuff Alex won’t ever forget.
In a way, I don’t blame him for being guarded and even rude with members of the NY media. The problem is, he needs to do a better job of who to tune out and who to tune in because, there are members of the NY media who will cut him slack.
I think Pete genuinely wants to get to know Alex in the professional sense. He wants to find out what makes him tick and try to get a better feel for how to better cover him.
The rudeness? That’s something Alex can and should improve on.
The fact he doesn’t talk to Melky or Cano during the off-season? That’s Alex. Its just the way he is and he doesn’t mean anything by it.
Everybody you meet in life has personality quirks. Yes, even famous people. Problem is, famous people’s quirks are written about, dissected and, in some cases, conclusions are made by people who have more (and worse) personality quirks than the person they are dissecting.
I think Alex is a “late bloomer” on the maturation front. He’s a lot better than he was and, 10 years from now, will be a lot more of a complete person.
Its tough being Goliath. Nobody feels your pain.
As baseball players go, Alex is Goliath. As much as he may want to be one of the boys, his talent and attention levels preclude it.
That’s why I think he enjoys Melky, Shelley and Robby so much. They cut through the BS and make him one of the boys and I think it gives Alex something he has never had in his life. The chance to act like a kid.
He’s been an adult in many ways since he was 17 years old. That’s tough and its why its taken him a little longer to become more fully formed as a person.
He’s made great strides in the last few years and I think it will only get better.
SJ44:
I know a lot of golf writers. Tiger is a pain in their ass. But he’s such a compelling figure and he’s at least civil to them. As for Joe D., some of his best friends in baseball were the writers. Teammates used to find that strange.
I don’t buy that Alex can be different with people because he was raised in Miami by his mom. I covered collegte basketball for years and knew literally dozens of kids who were raised by single moms or in some cases not even that. They were perfectly reasonable people.
People misunderstand what I’m saying. I don’t want the guy to tell me about his personal life. I just want him to talk about baseball.
If you walked up to me on the street and said “Hey Pete, I like your blog. What kind of computer do you use?” and I said “Mac” and turned and walked away without another word, what would you think of me? You’s tell people, “man, what a jerk.”
I’m working on a story on the last year of Yankee Stadium. Talking to Jeter, Jorge, Mo, etc. Great stories, memories, etc. I went up to Alex, explained when I was doing and I got in two questions before he turned and walked away. This is on an afternoon in March, not at 11 p.m. at night.
If I was the only person who got this treatment, that would be one thing. Then it’s my fault. I’m not. I wasn’t asking him about anything personal, I just wanted to ask him about Yankee Stadium.
So I wrote my story without him. It’s a lesser story because of it. I get the paid the same amount. My life doesn’t change. But I’d really like to write a better story for people to read. He’s a really great player. I think part of that is communicating with fans.
If the Patriots were closing their stadium and I read a story about what the players thought, I’d want to know what Brady said.
Don’t go by TV. That’s 3 softball questions from YES after the win. 20 seconds. Everybody looks good then.
Pete,
I don’t understand what it is exactly you want from A-Rod. If you had 15 mins to sit down with him for an interview what questions would you ask that haven’t already been asked and answered?
A-Rod is uncomfortable with the media I think we can all agree on that. But it doesn’t mean that he wasn’t brought up (or that he isn’t) a “decent human being”. Not wanting to answer any more questions and walking away from the situation does not mean that he’s not decent. So what if his teammates shake their heads, so what if the media is upset because he won’t answer any more questions. If he doesn’t want to do it then so be it.
Like someone said before in 2006 the media were all saying that Alex should just ’shut up and play’ and in 2007 that’s exactly what he did and had a great year and seemed to get along very will with his teammates. Now the media is whining about how he isn’t talking more, isn’t opening up more well which is it, you can’t have it both ways. Someone mentioned there are times when you have to just ‘fake it’ when doing something you don’t want to do. Alex has tried that before and it didn’t work (he was accused of being a robot).
Had he opted out and gone to Anaheim, he would be public enemy No. 1 in New York and every single one of you would hate his guts.
Some would, some wouldn’t (I was a fan before he came to New York and would have been a fan if he had left). But its all part of the game and has nothing to do with his personality. They aren’t exactly singing the praises of Johnny Damon in Boston these days but that doesn’t mean he is a bad person.
You know how he’s always talking about Robbie and Melky, how he mentors them, etc. From the day the season ended to the start of spring training he never spoke to either of those guys once. Doesn’t that strike you as weird?
Actually it doesn’t considering they weren’t even in the same country most of the winter. There are times when a couple of my closest friends have gone weeks, and on occasion months without speaking to each other. Not because we aren’t close or don’t care but because sometimes life takes you in different directions and time gets away from you. But if one needed something we’d be there for them in a heart beat.
I love how the media never has to take any accountability for their actions (they have been dogging Alex in public for years now with no signs of stopping) and yet are always ready to try to hold others accountable.
alex has spent so much time managing the way i think about him that i have lost all interest in the real alex….if there actually is one.
just hit the ball and go hide out as usual, thats fine with me.
Give Alex a break. I don’t care if he’s rude to the media. Look at all the bull writers like Lupica, Raissman, Madden, et al. dole out (not you Pete..lol=)). He doesn’t have to be anybody’s best bud.
All he needs to do is win a ring, as soon as he has a World Series under his belt all will be forgiven and forgotten. Mantle was an alcoholic, Babe a womanizer, Billy Martin simply crazy but all their flaws can be overlooked because of the rings. And Alex’s worst trait so far is bad bedside manner? As a fan I can live with it.
Alex should be Alex, not Jeter redux. Jeter’s not Mr. Perfect.
And for the record even if he was in a non-Yankee uniform I would still like & respect him.
People misunderstand what I’m saying. I don’t want the guy to tell me about his personal life. I just want him to talk about baseball.
Here’s where the media played a role again, Alex talks baseball and all of sudden he only cares about numbers and doesn’t care about winning. I instinctly remember an article when asked about his struggles and he rattled off several baseball greats who have also struggled at times and he got critized for that. The fact is no one wants to keep opening themselves up for that so he stopped doing it and now the media is going to have to deal with it.
If you walked up to me on the street and said “Hey Pete, I like your blog. What kind of computer do you use?†and I said “Mac†and turned and walked away without another word, what would you think of me? You’s tell people, “man, what a jerk.â€
Big difference is that Alex sees you all, all time and hears the same questions all the time. Its not just some random encounter and a basic question about a computer. He’s making it very clear that he doesn’t trust you (the media) and why should he?
A-Rod is so gangsta, just knowing himself makes him affiliated.
As a fan, all that I feel that any player, including A-Rod, owes me is their best performance on the field.
I get what Pete is saying, in a sense- there are some players that make his job easier or more enjoyable. Rodriguez doesn’t seem to be one of them. From his- and other reporters’ comments- some guys seem more personable and give them more- whether it’s time, funny anecdotes, clever quotes… Giambi and Damon come to mind as recent examples, and we all know how much Pete likes Hughes.
It’s human nature to like people who make our lives easier and maybe even treat us better. I have to wonder, though, when we read a story about a player, how much is the objective story and how much is shaped, fairly or not, by something other than they story itself. Maybe it can’t be separated, but I feel like there has to be areas of ommission… so-and-so is a great guy, I’ll talk about this funny, endearing story, that makes him look good. That guy, not so much, maybe I won’t report that.
I do wonder about- and I don’t know if Pete will have a chance to follow up on this or not (maybe I’ll have to bother him with an email)- how this affects coverage of the guys who don’t speak English that well. They have less of a chance to build that personal rapport or to directly express themselves to the people covering them. Combine a guy who tends to be more shy and reserved plus a native language that’s not English and, by factors out of everyone’s control, they already have a certain barrier in place.
dont even get me started on tiger. the guys a genius with a golf club in his hand, but he treats fans and the press like crap and the press never ever mentions the club throwing and crowd intimidation that they would comdemn anybody else for.
people like tiger and alex leave me with no interest whatsoever in thier private lives because they are so spoiled and phony in public.
No offense, Pete but sounds like you’re just peeved that you were given the brush off.
I think the “raised like a decent human being” is completely out of line. Alex is a decent human being. He doesn’t beat his wife, abuse others, and doesn’t torture small animals. He is not a criminal or dishonest. Just because he doesn’t extend to you the courtsey that you have failed to show him time and time again, doesn’t mean he is not decent. The NY Tabloids don’t miss any chance to slam him. This year alone, you knew what he meant but you made it a headline. Like someone said, we’ve seen on TV the way he acts with the media during post interviews. He makes himself available but then again, nothing is good enough for all of you.
Oh and he is not the one preaching to the world how he is a mentor to those kids. Melky and Robbie are the ones telling the media that during interviews. In the Dominican papers, they are the ones saying how Alex is their mentor and role model.
if they had reality shows:
arod’s would be unwatchable
jeters would get the highest ratings
but id set the tivo for giambi’s
Pete,
I understand your point. I really do. Golf writers though, don’t go after Tiger. Even if he is a pain in their butts, they don’t take shots at him.
In DiMaggio’s Era, the media rode the trains with him. Its why they kept so much of his life out of the papers. He was smart enough to befriend certain guys and that offered him cover.
You guys are in a different time now. In the case of the guys that work for tabloids, its even worse. Frankly, I don’t know how you guys get anything more than stock answers out of anybody these days. Its a tribute to your reporting and communication skills because the media/athlete relationship is just a different animal these days.
Alex, and I readily admit a lot of it is his own doing, has had bombs, not shots, bombs, thrown at him by some members of the media for a long time. After awhile, it scars you.
I don’t make excuses for the rudeness. There is no excuse for it and I really wish he would cool it on that front. It doesn’t help him in any way and I can’t explain to you why he does it.
Miami kids are different though. They really are. Look at guys who played football at the University of Miami for the last 25 years. To say some were real characters would be an understatement.
I could give you dozens of examples of kids like Alex who have grown up in South Florida. Having traveled around the world, it really is a different environment and its more than just being in a single parent home. Its a whole bunch of different issues that we can discuss over a beer one night.
Kids just are different in South Florida. I know I am not describing it well but, different is the only word I can come up with right now.
You had all kinds of personalities on those UM teams and those are the guys Alex relates to. He’s never spent a day in class at UM, yet he thinks of himself as a Hurricane. In a way, his actions mirror a lot of the actions of guys who played at UM.
Think about it for a moment. Alex LONGS to be one of the boys. Its why he helps college kids work out in the off-season. Why he is a Hurricane, even though he never played there. Why he is so playful with Melky, Robbie and Shelley.
Its like he has two people in him fighting for the top position. The “kid” and the corporate icon. That doesn’t lend itself to someone being all together on every front.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not making excuses for it. Just giving some perspective as to its origination point.
Its hard to say what the solution is, aside from curbing the rudeness of course.
we get it Pete, you hate A-Rod.
Why no long blog posts about how Derek doesn’t let anyone into his life? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t if you are A-Rod.
One of the biggest differences in why Joba and Phil open up more than A-Rod is the generation gap. Joba and Phil have grown up an era when everything is now out in the open. Where people expose their daily lives on blogs, videos, whatever. Sometimes to the point of you wishing certain people wouldn’t.
I have to laugh at you guys attacking Pete for trying to do his job or do something a little different with it. He didn’t say he wanted to cover him like Britney Spears.
Actually, I think Pete is handling this is in a very positive manner.
He’s not ripping Alex. He just wants to understand the “why” into some of his actions.
That’s his job. Its not just reporting who struck 6 today and who got 2 hits.
I don’t see what Pete is discussing here as a “rip job”. I see it as a guy who wants the best player in the game to cast himself in a more positive light.
Nothing wrong with that, IMO.
I’m working on a story on the last year of Yankee Stadium. Talking to Jeter, Jorge, Mo, etc. Great stories, memories, etc. I went up to Alex, explained when I was doing and I got in two questions before he turned and walked away. This is on an afternoon in March, not at 11 p.m. at night. If I was the only person who got this treatment, that would be one thing. Then it’s my fault. I’m not. I wasn’t asking him about anything personal, I just wanted to ask him about Yankee Stadium. So I wrote my story without him. It’s a lesser story because of it. I get the paid the same amount. My life doesn’t change. But I’d really like to write a better story for people to read. He’s a really great player. I think part of that is communicating with fans.
Are you kidding us Pete, of all the history about the Stadium and all the great players that have walked through the door, you were unable to give a us a quality piece because Alex didn’t want to answer questions?? Seriously?
Drew- I don’t think people are attacking Pete, but when something doesn’t sound right we question it. Why should we go on blindly Pete’s word alone (I know more about Alex than I do Pete lol). But what Pete is presenting sounds awfully one side and like most stories that are two sides and the truth usually falls somewhere in the middle.
Diva, I’m sure Pete’s not the only one frustrated by what A-Rod has, or doesn’t have, to say, but most don’t share those thoughts with us. He’s not saying A-Rod’s a horrible person, it would just be nice if he let his guard down once in a while.
Or maybe A-Rod just hates Pete
Peter,
I’d be really interested in when ARod started walking away from reporters after a few questions. I didn’t hear about it prior to last year. And if he were doing it in 2006 I’d be surprised that we didn’t hear about it then, when people criticized him for everything he did.
In fact, one of the (many) ridiculous things Verducci wrote in 2006 was that ARod not only knew the writers’ names, but their affiliations as well. IIRC, he contrasted this with most players who never addressed a reporter by name and used it as yet another example of how ARod was too needy and concerned about his image.
So, as I said, I’d really like to know when it started.
Thanks.
If i was ARod i would be incredibly cautious in talking to the media too considering the media’s track record in jumping on his everyword and creating something out of nothing. As someone alotted to previously, ARod grew up in front of the worlds eyes as a young kid who was still trying to find out who he was and i think he has finally found it and accepted it. So, he’s a little quirky, so am i, but i do it in the comfort of my home, with friends, or with people who aren’t going to write about it the next day, Alex doesn’t have that luxory.
One thing i don’t get is why people give him a hard time about being the highest paid player. Bottom line is baseball is a job, a cool one, but a job nonetheless. If i was him i would get every dime i could and insure the lively hood of my children, my children’s children and so on and so forth. You only play ball for so long, take advantage.
PS..Pete, your blogs get me through the work day, keep it up!
Interesting point in your last post Clare – while reading through this entire post that part of the SI article kept replaying itself in my head.
SJ44: did you ever say what you do? I’d also like to ask you just what you mean by “Alex, and I readily admit a lot of it is his own doing,…”
But that is a rhetorical question. This has been rehashed since the days of Pete claiming its AROD/Lou vs. Torre and the old guard. Suffice it to say that is a terribly misleading view. Aside from the infamous Jeter quote way back when – just what has Alex ever done to incite the vile spewed at him?
Way up there, Pete said:
“I don’t write my stories for myself. I write them for you. Presumably, you’d like to know something about a player you like so much. Otherwise baseball might as well be played by nine robots.”
Maybe, these comments might point out that, as far as some segment of fans go, the games are what matter. Yes, they are played by flesh-and-blood men, but when I watch a game, or read an account of it (or of spring training or whatever), I care most about what we can see them do between the lines.
You guys are there, in good seats, with the experience of watching thousands of games before. Tell me about the flow of the game, the dozens of ways in which any given baseball game is unusual or interesting. Telling me how the player felt when he recognized the fastball coming in the bottom of the third is something I find really trivial. Honestly, I could not care less about the answers players give when asked to shed insight into the game; it’s obvious that they have to develop stock answers.
I do like some of the human-interest stuff on players who are new – Joba, IPK, Phil; these guys are fresh. And when Alex was fresh, the type of stories you can write about Joba now that you would have been able to write about Alex then would have been interesting too.
But they were written, years ago, and one of the key questions that everyone has about the fresh faces, namely “Is he going to grow up to be a good ballplayer, or not?”, is something we know about Alex. Now, all I care about is watching him work, at a job he is insanely good at. It helps that he’s playing for the Yankees, but I watch and appreciate Pujols in the same way, and even Manny Ramirez.
I don’t need to know anything else about how they approach training, or pre-game preparation, or what they were thinking when the third-base coach put up the stop sign. I care about their performance, and the things they actually did during the games.
Of course, there are lots of sports page editors who will be absolutely convinced that fans who think like me don’t exist, at least not in any number worth caring about. So I’m sure the pressure to produce the kinds of stories you’re trying to get when Alex frustrates you is pretty great.
I live 25 miles from Cooperstown. Hmn. Yeah, I guess I’ll go see Alex at the Hall when his time comes. If I’m not to busy, or something.
Just kidding,I’ll be THERE!
While it appears im in the minority, I do have to agree with Pete on this one. As a fan, I find it hard to be on Arods side. He is someone you cant relate to as a person and causes controversy wherever he goes. I know money does alot to these players but for Arod his behavior is on a whole other level.
He is a great player; noone can deny that. But there has to be a reason as to why a guy like him was unable to make friends on the team and not fit in for the longest time
I don’t think you can reasonably have this discussion, Pete, until you concede the utter venality of MANY sportswriters when it comes to Alex Rodriguez. If there’s a precedent for it in professional sports, I haven’t witnessed it. I have many theories about why this came about – too complicated to get into here. Suffice to say, it says far more about the people who ‘cover’ him than Rodriguez himself, and it ain’t pretty.
A virtual hate climate was created by the media and permeates his every move, word and deed. There has been a dehumanizing quality to these write-ups, which have always reminded me of how hate groups operate; Really, it reminds me of Tennessee Williams’ ‘Suddenly Last Summer.’ There is something nearly obscene about the way the player has been harped on and dissected. Could this, at least, partially explain, if not justify, his rudeness? Maybe you are more exempt than others in the desire not to criticize, but to, and I must insist, DESTROY this guy; but why would he take the care to distinguish one from the other? He’s probably too busy running for cover from the ‘coverage.’
But what’s happened is: while the really stupid people, or the “boo” culture, have bought into the sportswriter agenda, which essentially created those people, those with a little more critical thinking skills see through the,to use Pete’s word “weird” agenda of the writers, who have actually failed in trying to bring him down, creating, instead, a SYMPATHETIC figure; and Yanksfan57 hit it on the head; the writers are “weirdly” INVESTED somehow in ARod failing.
But as I said, you’ve all failed, because against this poorly disguised disdain you all seem to have for Alex Rodriguez, he looms as a very SYMPATHETIC victim.
And as RCK pointed out, and others after him, ARod’s awkwardness, and unchecked bursts of personality against his own surveillance of self, betray a HUMANITY that he just isn’t skilled enough to conceal, and I think THAT touches people.
“But there has to be a reason as to why a guy like him was unable to make friends on the team and not fit in for the longest time”
maybe the reason is that you really have no clue whether or not he has friends on the team, and your whole assumption base is flawed? nah…Mike Lupica said it, so it must be true.
people love phil and joba because they are not superstars and helped the yanks get to the postseason. Alex is a superstar and doesn’t need to let people into his life. Sports writers are obnoxious,annoying, and insecure. They act like a bunch a babies if an athlete doesn’t talk to them. Then turn around and try to get the public not to like them. Arod is one of the best of all time. who cares what other people think about you.
i LOVE arod
a-rod is the hottest thing aon earth and i did not the story so i am writting what i want .
hi alex my name is maybe I´M panameian and I´ll go a see in person, waooo you are the man more hamdsonand and the best playing baseball .
be carefully ahhhhhhhhh is I forget you have a eyes very very very very beutiful.
eres el hombre mas buenon del mundo
wrtting a my mail. this is maybe_fashion18@hotmail.com, please