Alex Rodriguez has been atrocious this post-season. How bad? Well when I asked my friend Jaclyn (a die-hard Yankee fan who loves Paul O'Neill more than anyone in Paul O'Neill's family possibly could) how she feels when he comes up to the plate, she said:
"Exactly how I felt every time I went over to this guy I was hooking up with's place. He couldnt get it up, but every time I hoped it would be different. 'OK IT'S THIS TIME, OR I'M DONE.' but I kept going, because I had nothing else going on."
Ladies and gentlemen, your 2012 New York Yankees.
So it should come as no surprise that the Yankees benched the impotent Rod (heh) in the 8th inning of Game 1 of the American League Championship Series against the Detroit Tigers. What is more surprising is what the New York Post claims happened next, when A-Rod saw two young ladies in the crowd near the dugout.
“Alex was holding a pen and wrote a note on a ball which was thrown at the women by a ball boy,’’ the witness explained.
“The girls, who had already caught two balls, seemed bemused at first and tried to hand the ball to another fan, but other fans noticed the note on it and yelled at them to read it.
“The note asked them to write their phone numbers on the ball and throw it back,’’ the witness said.
“One of the girls, with darker blond hair, wrote . . . on the ball and threw it back at A-Rod, who gave her a big smile.”
I have two reactions to this. First, what a set of balls on this guy! He's in Yankee Stadium, and is probably the most hated hometown player since Hitler's zombie corpse pitched middle relief (admittedly a bad signing by Billy Martin), and yet he doesn't even try to pretend to be interested in the game. Second, is A-Rod the least likable athlete in the history of the world? I mean sure OJ killed somebody... Nevermind, it's probably still OJ.