OAKLAND – The morbid numbers are seared into not only his brain, but those of Yankee fans everywhere. It was April 19 and Alex Rodriguez needed a ground single in his final at-bat to escape Fenway Park with one hit in 17 at-bats during his initial taste of sports’ best rivalry.
The hit didn’t lead to a victory and the Yankees exited New England’s living room having lost three of four to the Red Sox. A-Rod stuffed an embarrassing .160 average into his luggage. Two days before, the frustration he was feeling bubbled over when he slammed his helmet after grounding into an inning-ending double play in the seventh of what would become a 5-2 loss.
“Sometimes you need to let it out,” Rodriguez said. “When you have been stinking out the place like I have been, it feels good to let out your emotions.”
The Yankees left Fenway on April 19 and today is May 7. Yet, to A-Rod, that four-game stay in Boston might as well be eons ago.
“It seems like a long way away,” A-Rod said after his ninth-inning homer off Yankee punching bag Arthur Rhodes tied the score against the A’s on Wednesday night. Tony Clark’s two-out double then put the Yankees ahead in an eventual 4-3 victory that hiked their winning streak to eight games going into last night’s action. “You have to have a short memory.”
A-Rod started last night with a .274 average, six homers and 12 RBIs. He had hit in 13 of the last 15 games, was 22-for-57 (.386), homered in two straight and was showing the ability to drive balls to the gaps, an A-Rod trademark, according to Joe Torre.
“That’s where his power is,” Torre said. “He reminds me of [Mike] Piazza the way he hits balls and they keep carrying.”
In between the nightmare in Boston and feasting on A’s pitching in the first two games of this trip, A-Rod endured his first booing by Yankee fans as the Red Sox swept three from the Yankees in The Bronx.
Now he looks like the best player in baseball, the one the Yankees gave up Alfonso Soriano for. And when he is raking from the No. 3 hole, the lineup – which still has some clogged arteries – takes on a different presence.
“He is in a groove right now,” said Derek Jeter, who isn’t and missed Wednesday night’s action with food poisoning or a stomach virus. “He is pretty balanced and relaxed at the plate.”
It was the middle of what is supposed to be The Best Lineup Ever that delivered Wednesday night. Gary Sheffield stopped an 86 at-bat homerless slump with one in the second off Barry Zito. Jason Giambi homered off Zito in the sixth and A-Rod, who was 0-for-3, crushed Rhodes’ first pitch of the ninth high off the green cement wall beyond the left-center field fence.
Nobody, even the most angst-filled Yankee fan, really believed A-Rod wasn’t going to hit. It was April. But the Red Sox-Yankees stage makes everything bigger, and he was very small.
Now, less than three weeks later, A-Rod looks like the best player in baseball again.
“Baseball is a different game and it takes time to get into a groove,” A-Rod said.
Consider that time over.