Posted: 3:49 am
August 27, 2008
THE crowd stood, cheering and chanting. "Let's Go A-Rod" morphing into "Let's Go Yankees." It was the seventh inning. But it was more than the seventh inning. It felt like a whole season was on the line.
And like a flyball that will find the weak-link right fielder in Little League, the biggest at-bat of this game - of this Yankees season - had, of course, found Alex Rodriguez. It is just the way it is. The way it is always going to be in this financially arranged marriage between Rodriguez and the Yankees. It is always going to fall to him, the face of these Yankees.
A lot had gone wrong to put the Yankees down by a grand slam. Andy Pettitte was horrible. Jason Giambi again ate a baseball rather than show how poorly he throws it. No one other than Johnny Damon had damaged the knuckleball of Tim Wakefield, fresh off the disabled list. Yet this game - this era in Yankees baseball - is defined by the talented third baseman.
We will remember Rodriguez dallied with Boston, didn't go there, came to the Yankees instead in 2004, and in his time here the nature of the Red Sox-Yankee rivalry has reversed to Red Sox champs, Yankees chumps. Rodriguez is the face of that historic flip-flop. He has bought into that role twice now, first when he forced his trade here, then last offseason when he accepted the largest financial package ever to return through the backdoor. He is all outsized. His greed. His lust for attention. His insecurities.
The big man on the big stage, and so when he comes up small as often as he has this year, he becomes most culpable.
So here he was in the bottom of the seventh. Late August. Red Sox in the opposing dugout. Bases loaded. The season teetering toward extinction. A loss meant a six-game wild-card deficit, a hole becoming an inescapable canyon.
Damon had walked, Derek Jeter had singled, Bobby Abreu had walked. Of course they had. That assured the big at-bat would find Rodriguez. Bases loaded. One out. Boston up, 7-3. Rodriguez already had batted two innings earlier as the tying run, with two on and the Yanks down three, and flied meekly to center. He had heard boos.
