The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com
August 5, 2010
The ball is over the center field wall at the new Yankee Stadium and Alex Rodriguez comes up on first base hard and puts his hands out, in relief more than anything else, not quite a safe sign but close enough. Now Rodriguez cuts the bag at first the way you're taught and heads for second, heads right into the noise for him at the new Stadium and into his own complicated baseball history, on this milestone day for him in a complicated baseball life."It was a relief just to put it past me," Rodriguez said a half-hour after the game.
They asked him about what the past week or so has been like for him and Rodriguez smiled and said, "It hasn't been a lot of fun."
In the moment, though, it is all fun for him. A dream trip around the bases for him. He rounds the bases and the people keep cheering for his 600th home run in the big leagues. They wanted to witness history and now they have. Of course the history is as complicated as everything else with No. 13 for the Yankees, No. 7 on the all-time home run list. Six hundred and counting. Younger than Babe Ruth was when he got to 600.
"An amazing accomplishment," Rodriguez's manager, Joe Girardi, says in the interview room across from the Yankee clubhouse.
Amazing in a lot of ways, starting with what Rodriguez, with the world of talent he has for baseball, once thought he had to do to get here.
They still cheered him big and loud for No. 600 Wednesday at the Stadium, tried to cheer the way everybody used to for home runs like these. They cheered in St. Louis the way the country did when Mark McGwire hit his 62nd home run to pass Roger Maris 12 years ago, before everybody knew that McGwire's numbers had been artificially enhanced the way his body was.
But they sure knew in San Francisco about Barry Bonds when he passed Henry Aaron, hit No. 756 to become baseball's all-time home run leader, almost three years ago exactly, Aug. 7, 2007. Somehow, after everything, history is still history in baseball. Even stained. Even when the record book is filled with so many stains you think somebody has been spitting tobacco juice at it.
Juice being the operative word.
So this was a Yankee event, all the trimmings, for Rodriguez and the Yankees and the people in the ballpark Wednesday, one everybody had been waiting through 46 at-bats since No. 599. This is the whole ballgame for Rodriguez now, now and for the rest of the way, for as long as he is healthy: Hitting as many home runs as he can and winning as much as he can so that people don't talk as much about the use of performance-enhancing drugs he admitted to last year when he got caught by Sports Illustrated.
He hit one in the bottom of the first, gave a 2-0 pitch from Shaun Marcum the ride that he did. Just not as loud as it would have been if he hadn't admitted to being a juicer, not as loud as it was last year when Derek Jeter passed Lou Gehrig in this place to become the Yankees' all-time hit leader.Complicated record, complicated guy, one with a world of talent for whom that wasn't enough. He went to the needle the way lesser talents did.
It is why, as truly great a baseball player as he is, he is no better than Bonds, himself one of the most gifted players of all time. Or McGwire. Or Sammy Sosa. He is a Yankee, though. Sometimes you wonder if there should be some sort of formula to decide how many home runs to knock off because of the drug use he says lasted three years in Texas. Maybe we just set him back to 500, where he was three years ago on this day in August, and call it even.
Since we can't throw out the number the way they do records in track and field when runners get help from the wind.
Jeter was waiting for him at home plate in the bottom of the first. They gave each other high-fives, both hands. Then the captain of the Yankees hugged Rodriguez. Complicated relationship, whatever bow they try to put around it now.
The Yankees were up and out of the dugout. Nick Swisher bear-hugged Rodriguez. Jeter would give him another hug in the dugout. Rodriguez would come out for a curtain call. Once the only three members of the 600 Home Run Club in baseball were the great Henry Aaron and Babe Ruth and Willie Mays, the greatest player, pound-for-pound, of them all. Now Ken Griffey Jr. is in there, too. But so are Bonds, Sammy Sosa, A-Rod.
"Welcome to the club," Barry Bonds wrote on his website.
Yeah. They're in the same club.
Really what you wondered at the Stadium, after the ball had been retrieved and the game had been resumed, is if there will ever be another home run milestone in baseball that will ever matter, truly. Unless you are a fan and you've decided to forgive and forget because the guy is one of yours, the way A-Rod - once he showed he had a World Series in him - is one of theirs now at Yankee Stadium.
"It's definitely a special number," Rodriguez said when it was over.
Not as special as it could have been, without the revelations and admissions of two springs ago. Big day for him at the Stadium, no doubt. Big number. Big, complicated number, for the most complicated guy to ever wear the uniform, all the way back to Babe Ruth.
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