If you've read this blog at all, the decision Mike Lupica made in titling his article (or perhaps that his editor made) should give you some idea what's got CW so riled up:
"Bid farewell to A-Rod, the gold-plated phony."
Are you fucking serious?
Ok. Deep breath:
Alex Rodriguez and his agent, Scott Boras, have become the kind of phonies that aspiring phonies now study in sports, somewhat the way scientists study lab rats.
A fairly...well...innocuous first paragraph, in that nothing here hasn't been said a million times. There's no egregious oversteps of logic, and, well, frankly, Boras is a piece of shit. But just curious: who's writing this article, Holden Caulfield? "Phonies"? Already, this is obviously a column chockfull of childish name-calling. I can't help but think of Mike Lupica as that dude on the Family Guy who keeps calling Peter a "great big phony."
Here was Boras the other night, getting his client A-Rod into the World Series the only way he can, having him opt out of his Yankees contract on the night the Boston Red Sox were about to sweep the Colorado Rockies.
This has been beaten to death of course, not the least of which in this blog...obviously, Boras understood the timing of his announcment, but it's not anyone's fault but the media that it "upstaged" the world series...anyway Lupica uses this piddling idea to set up what he obviously thinks is a grand wag of the Wildean tradition:
In so doing, Boras unwittingly gave us a fitting epitaph to A-Rod's Yankee career:
He upstaged more World Series games than he actually played in.
Ba-Fucking Zing. Consider A-Rod posterized! That damned fool couldn't even take a marginally talented team and, with the help of his 13 extra Wins Against Replacement, take them singlehandedly (embarrassingly pathetic starting pitching and all) to a world championship. For shame! What a phony! This guy's a great big phony!
Remember when Babe fucking Ruth singlehandedly won a bunch of World Serieses? He had mediocre starting pitching right? And it's not like he had a hall-of-famer hitting behind him. How many hall-of-famers were hitting behind A-Rod this year, when he still managed to put up monster numbers? How many hall-of-fame pitchers did he have in a rotation he managed to single-handedly carry to the playoffs?
The answer to the first question is zero (unless you count Posada...which you don't) and the answer to the second question is also zero.
Nevertheless, Lupica is right, in the most literal sense--A-Rod did not win a WS in NY. This is misleading criticism, but at least accurate criticism. He really gets off the rails as this column goes on:
It was the late George Young, general manager of the football Giants, who once said to me, "When they say it's not about the money, it's always about the money."
It is always about the money with A-Rod. He just won't ever say that, even if you threaten him with one of his own baseball bats.
First of all:
What the fuck?
Second of all:
No seriously what the fuck?
What does this have to do with anything? Of course A-Rod's concerned with money. He signed the richest contract in baseball history. But how is A-Rod's pursuit of free agency riches different from anyone not named Jermaine Dye (who turned down higher paying gigs than the White Sox in 2004's offseason since he had given Kenny Williams his word. Class act, Jermaine Dye, but beside the point)? And how can we overlook the fact that A-Rod requested permission from the Player's Association to restructure his deal when the A-Rod to Boston trade was pending in order to help Boston and Texas meet salary needs? Though the request was denied, the fact remains that A-Rod was willing to take less money to go play for a winner. Therefore this asinine claim that "it's always all about the money with A-Rod" is unequivocally false. Seriously. It is completely a lie by a piece of shit sports journalist.
Oh wait! There's more bullshit from Lupica
So he tries to make it about his teammates, some of whose names he actually knows. So here was Boras, who never seems to run out of saliva - or angles - talking about Mo Rivera and Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte instead of the $300 million he thinks he can get for A-Rod someplace else.
"Alex's decision was one based on not knowing what his closer, his catcher and one of his statured starting pitchers was going to do," Boras said in one interview he gave Sunday night while Game 4 of the Series was still going on.
Sure this might be a little bullshit on A-Rod and Boras's part, but it's clear that A-Rod is interested in winning championships. The Yankees are going to be absolutely for shit next year and the fact of the matter is the increase in pay A-Rod's looking at over what the Yankees offered is going to be piddling when compared to the money he's already amassed through salary and endorsements.
Are we really supposed to be fed the line that A-Rod values an extra 30 million out of over 600 million he stands to earn in his career over everything else--atmosphere, teammates (i.e. not that piece of shit Jeter who refused to help his team by letting a far superior ss play his natural position? the same piece of shit Jeter who threw his struggling teammate under the bus in 2006? the same piece of shit Jeter who shits gold and lets A-Rod eat shit at every opportunity?), and winning?
I don't buy it. Frankly, this whole situation reminds me of the excellent movie 61* (go see it, stat) and the dynamic between Maris and the Yankees fans, media, and team. If Maris played in the free agent era, don't you suppose he'd have loved to get the fuck out of that piece of shit journalism haven and den of classless baseball fans and go play for an equally contending team in some less dystopian environ?
I do. And I think that's exactly what A-Rod's doing. Why on earth would he play in NY
1.) They're going to be no good next year without A-Rod. With him, they're going to be a Wild Card team at best.
2.) They have no pitching
3.) Jeter's a piece of shit who A-Rod doesn't get along with
4.) The Media is completely unethical, uninformed, and out to get A-Rod for his every misstep
5.) The fans have booed him frequently
6.) Even after singlehandedly taking the Yankees to the playoffs this year, he got very little appreciation for it from the media, who preferred to focus on two hitless playoff games.
The rest of the article is in the same vein, and therefore isn't really worth discussing...blah blah blah A-Rod's selfish, blah blah blah Boras wants money. But here's a few choice quotes:
So he tries to make it about his teammates, some of whose names he actually knows.
I have even heard some broadcasters suggest that Joe Torre leaving the Yankees might also have been a reason why A-Rod wanted to leave. Every time I did, I had the same reaction: That anybody thinking Rodriguez had loyalty to any manager - especially one who batted him eighth in a playoff game against the Detroit Tigers last year - must be drunk
You can go up and down the Red Sox batting order, pick any name, and find somebody who did more for his team than A-Rod did for the Yankees in the last three Octobers he played for them.
He was a gold-plated phony coming in the door and he is the same leaving.
He's even got a graphic chronologizing A-Rod's blunders and ignoring A-Rod's positive contributions.
What a sad, pathetic little man Mike Lupica most obviously is.
