And here we go.
Again.
At the top, let’s try to be fair about something. There are exactly 1,200 men who occupy slots on 40-man rosters across major league baseball. Many of them have spent time in their careers saddled on various disabled lists: the 15-day, the 60-day, the new 7-day concussion DL.
And every one of them, as the injury begins to heal, as the ache starts to fade, as the time draws near to play baseball again, feels a genuine sense of happiness and relief. Maybe they’re disposed to share those feelings on Twitter, especially if they are new to the medium.
And there are 1,199 of them who would never find themselves embroiled in a controversy based on that relief. There is only one of them capable of doing that.
His name is Alex Rodriguez.
OK. If we’re being fair then we need to mention this: This is what Rodriguez, @AROD, Tweeted: “Visit from Dr. Kelly over the weekend, who gave me the best news – the green light to play games again!” Dr. Kelly is Dr. Bryan Kelly, who has overseen A-Rod’s rehab. He is not the Yankees’ team doctor. That is Dr. Chris Ahmed.
Those other 1,200 players? The same 1,199 probably understand that they aren’t really cleared to play before the team doctor says so. Most of them probably would refrain from saying they were. And if a handful of them misspoke, and jumped the gun?
Well, those 1,199 players are not Alex Rodriguez.
The one who is? Tweeting out of line was enough to irk general manager Brian Cashman, and plenty. Put it this way: If we were to build a Pantheon of Yankees quotes from the last 40 years, these would certainly be on the short list:
“One’s a born liar, the other’s convicted.”
“I’m the straw that stirs the drink.”
“[Irabu] is a fat, pus-y toad.”
“[Sparky Lyle] went from Cy Young to Sayonara.”
“I’ll stick to building ships.”
Well, onto that shelf of Bartlett’s finalists we must now enter one of the strongest contenders to come along in years, this quote that Cashman delivered to ESPN New York yesterday:
“You know what, when the Yankees want to announce something, [we will]. “Alex should just shut the f–k up. That’s it.”
Naturally, there is a segment of Anti-Alex that wants to nominate Cashman for governor this morning, because it’s always fun to a) see someone else get cursed out by their boss b) especially when that someone is a kajillionaire c) especially when that kajillionaire is Alex Rodriguez.
And there is this: Cashman clearly — clearly — wasn’t responding this way simply to one 20-word Tweet, but to the accumulated drama built up across nine-plus seasons of The A-Rod Experience. All of it: the moodiness, the sullenness, the steroid issues, the ill-timed slumps, the treating of the lower grandstand like a singles bar, the potential suspension presently looming over his head, and every fine-print item in between.
And, mostly, for the onerous contract that still sits on the books like a giant ink-blot stain.
This is really just the latest way that Yankees management has acted out during this latest phase of the A-Rod Era, the one that began with his awful October and connected to the revelation that he was hurt and connected even stronger to these latest rounds of steroid allegations.
It is, of course, the first time someone used the mother of four-letter words.
Though Yankees management probably would suggest that this is the mother of all four-letter words: A-R-O-D.
“I don’t Tweet,” manager Joe Girardi said last night (ah, yes: in a related story, the Yankees won a thrilling 4-3 game off the Rangers last night when Ichiro Suzuki slugged a walk-off home run), “and I don’t follow Twitter.”
That probably would have been a good strategy for Rodriguez to follow, because the only surprising thing in all of this is that it took him one whole day to find Twitter trouble. Though he probably couldn’t have anticipated his general manager going all Joe Pesci over it.
Cashman’s message should have been a little more PG rated, and it also wasn’t exactly subtle. And probably shouldn’t be interpreted this way: Hurry back soon, Alex.