Perhaps no professional athlete wanted the adoration of fans more than Alex Rodriguez. Perhaps no professional athlete is disdained as much as Alex Rodriguez. Although it appears to be over, Alex Rodriguez’s career lacks clarity. Never has a player so good (.295 batting average, .380 on base percentage, 696 home runs for his career, among other jaw-dropping numbers) played such a contradictory career in terms of how and why we view his career the way we do.
Alex Rodriguez’s Career Lacks Clarity
The Trade That Wasn’t
If one were to remove his name from the story, there are aspects of Alex Rodriguez’s career that would make the average fan swoon. A-Rod was more than ready to forfeit $25 million in order to facilitate the transaction when it appeared he was going to be traded from the Texas Rangers to the Boston Red Sox. The MLB Players’ Union, however, put a stop to that. Ultimately, Rodriguez was never given the chance to sacrifice money for winning. But fans always love to celebrate athletes who choose winning over money … you know, unless it’s LeBron James going to the Miami Heat.
When the Red Sox trade fell through, the New York Yankees stepped up and made Rodriguez’s move from Texas happen. In going to the Yankees, Rodriguez got his chance to play for a perennial contender without sacrificing money. Although, he did have to sacrifice. Simply put: There was never a point in time when Derek Jeter was a better player than Alex Rodriguez. Not as a hitter, not in the field. It was Rodriguez who made the switch to third base, however. Conversely, the team-first, winner guy narrative has always stuck with Jeter. Even though he was the stubborn one, refusing to switch positions.
A-Rod’s Drug Use
As far as the PED angle of Alex Rodriguez’s career, it likewise doesn’t offer an easy answer going forward. Of course Rodriguez did take PEDs. But he never failed an MLB-administered drug test. We found out about his indiscretions through leaked documents and a dirty, drug-peddling pseudo-pharmacist.
For his PED use, Rodriguez served a full season suspension. But that begs the question, how much is enough? Is there an enough when it comes to punishment? With A-Rod, we’re going to enter some uncharted territory when his name appears on the Hall of Fame ballot. With other guys from the Steroids Era – Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, ect. – part of the reason voters want to come down so hard on those guys is because they never paid for their sins while they were playing.
The carryover is that banning them from the Hall is their punishment. Rodriguez served his time. Keeping him out of the Hall of Fame feels a bit unnecessary because he served his time. Banning Rodriguez from the Hall feels like Double Jeopardy. It’s like he gets to get punished all over again, without (technically) ever getting caught by MLB’s drug testing program.
Legacy?
Furthermore, as great as Rodriguez was, he doesn’t really have a legacy. His career lacks a defining moment. Derek Jeter’s lasting moment was the running flip to home plate against the Oakland A’s (I’m still not convinced Jeremy Giambi was out, by the way). Barry Bonds hitting the record-breaking home run with his arm stretched to the sky is his moment. Great players have moments. What’s A-Rod’s moment? One could argue Rodriguez is among the top-ten players of all-time. However, even though his career might not even be over, in terms of legacy, it just feels … sort of blank. Or worse: if there is a quintessential A-Rod memory, it’s a negative one.
There doesn’t even seem to be a generic Tim-Duncan-banking-in-a-jumper moment for Rodriguez. You can picture his swing. You can picture him in a uniform. You can picture him as a centaur. (Wait … what? Yeah, that happened.) However, in that picture he’s not doing anything like the way you picture great players doing great things in your mind. Although he came to the Yankees back in 2004, Rodriguez exists in the shadows of Yankee teammates Jeter and Mariano Rivera. Even Bernie Williams and lesser players are more highly regarded among fans.
A player of Alex Rodriguez’s caliber would probably go down as one of the two or three best players in the history of about 29 MLB franchises. The only problem is the other one team is the one in which Rodriguez did his best work for.
Man Without a Home
While he only played for three teams over 22 seasons, Rodriguez feels more like a baseball mercenary than belonging to any particular team or teams. Rodriguez’s tenure with the Yankees will retroactively get diminished in a way his production would not merit. Because of that, a lack of association with a team or city is present in the way there is not with other players. Even the shamed steroid guys have MLB homes (Bonds has San Francisco, Mark McGwire has St. Louis, for example). Alex Rodriguez won’t have a home to go to in MLB after his career ends.
If it’s not already true, Alex Rodriguez’s career is a bit of a sports version of a Shakespearean comedy. That is, in the classical way of Shakespearean comedies having much more in common with modern-day tragedies than what we think of as comedies today. Rodriguez burst upon the scene at 18. He inherited all the expectations in the world. He lived up to the enormous expectations, but nonetheless shunned by the world he dedicated his skills – and life – to. There’s definitely warts on the body of Alex Rodriguez’s career. But it’s a shame those warts might metastasize and stand as the only thing that informs future MLB fans. Or even worse, Alex Rodriguez’s career might not endure at all. His career might just exist in the baseball abyss, just left sort of … blank.
Main Photo
