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Yankees' Rodriguez silences talk of steroids with great postseason
By William C. Rhoden
New York Times
Published on Friday, Nov 06, 2009
NEW YORK: Alex Rodriguez's first act as a World Series champion was to raise his arms and jump for joy. As soon as Shane Victorino made the Philadelphia Phillies' final out, Rodriguez ran toward the throng of New York Yankees teammates in the middle of Yankee Stadium and threw himself into the pack.
At 11:51 p.m., a journey that began when Rodriguez determined that he wanted a championship ring more than statistics, more than money, ended Wednesday night in the Bronx. The Yankees won their 27th World Series, A-Rod his long-awaited first.
Rodriguez stood on a platform holding the championship trophy over his head and said, ''Now we are World Series champions.'' He said he was looking forward to the parade today and ''then we're going to party.''
A season that began in Florida on a note of embarrassment ended Wednesday in exhilaration for Rodriguez.
In February, with dozens of
teammates standing nearby and a gaggle of reporters watching in Tampa, Fla., A-Rod, who had recently been outed by a Sports Illustrated report that he tested positive for steroids in 2003, issued a tearful apology to teammates, fans and family.
Many in the news media had been trumpeting the fiction that A-Rod would be the white knight who removed the stain of the home run king, Barry Bonds, who was under suspicion of using steroids. Then we learned that Rodriguez, too, was tainted.
But in the process of winning his first World Series championship, Rodriguez became a fallen hero on the rise.
When the news came out that Rodriguez had tested positive for steroids in 2003, one Yankees executive said: ''His legacy, now, is gone. He'll just play it out. Now he's a worker. Do your job, collect your paycheck and when you're finished playing, go away. That's what it is.''
Quite the contrary. Thanks to a solid season and a grand postseason, he has reclaimed his legacy. In fact, he has watched it grow.
We began reading and hearing that A-Rod was a changed man. How did that happen?
Some speculated that it was the finality of his divorce, others that it was the tearful February news conference in Tampa with teammates looking on. Still others said the author of Rodriguez's renaissance was actress Kate Hudson.
But A-Rod is not the one who has changed. He is the same guy. The Yankees' lineup has changed. The addition of Mark Teixeira and Nick Swisher have made A-Rod more effective. The addition of no-nonsense pitcher CC Sabathia and the effective A.J. Burnett has made the Yankees a tougher team overall.
The new view of Rodriguez is, on one level, a media-driven fan transformation that reached a peak heading into the postseason, when he suddenly began succeeding where he previously had failed.
Everyone loves redemption stories, but this transformation is more about fans' desire to have a winning team than one man's sea change. What's troubling about the transformation story is that the root of it is winning. For all of our new, exciting ways of delivering games, one thing has remained constant: performance trumps just about everything. When it leads to profits, performance trumps everything.
Until now, Rodriguez was dogged by the perception that he was a high-priced player who never won the big one and failed in the clutch. Had he suffered through another miserable postseason, he would have been vilified by those fans who now wax poetic about the changed A-Rod.
A month before the steroids bombshell, Rodriguez was roasted by his former manager, Joe Torre, in his book The Yankee Years. It ignited a new round of A-Rod battering and gave credibility to what many of the most devout Yankees fans had begun to think: Rodriguez was a phony and a fraud, disingenuous.
Torre's frank assessments confirmed in some fans' minds that Rodriguez was not the person to lead the Yankees to a title. Torre said Rodriguez became ''the unmistakable shorthand symbol for why the Yankees no longer were champions and suffered at the rise of the Red Sox.''
The book conjectured: ''Whether hitting 450-foot home runs or sunbathing shirtless in Central Park or squiring strippers, Rodriguez was like nothing ever seen before on the championship teams of the Torre Era: an ambitious superstar impressed and motivated by stature and status, particularly when those qualities pertained to himself.''
Rodriguez is being viewed differently. But it's not the made-for-TV confession or the relationship with Hudson that has fans turned on to ''the new'' Alex Rodriguez. His clutch performances and now a championship have changed minds and attitudes.
With a World Series title, A-Rod will receive richly deserved adulation and praise. The fans who jeered, who called him A-Fraud, who wanted him run out of town, now toss laurel wreaths his way.
Makes you wonder who the real phonies are.
NEW YORK: Alex Rodriguez's first act as a World Series champion was to raise his arms and jump for joy. As soon as Shane Victorino made the Philadelphia Phillies' final out, Rodriguez ran toward the throng of New York Yankees teammates in the middle of Yankee Stadium and threw himself into the pack.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Marginal, NY
Posted 07:21 AM, 11/06/2009
To me, he's just a guy who cheated, got paid as much a many team's entire payroll, and didn't finally perform on the big stage until he was surrounded by a $200 million dollar team. Yeah, what a guy.
Naples, FL
Posted 08:28 AM, 11/07/2009
Yeh, it silenced the steroid talk by NEW YORK REPORTERS. These guys live in a fantasy world where if it benefits NY, they think everyone in the world is happy. Their team spends $200M on players and we should all celebrate the great return of the Yankees. Ignorant!
