By Edward Thoma
Free Press Staff Writer
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Alex Rodriguez hit his 600th home run last week. I’ll bet you cared.
Perhaps more amazing than what Rodriguez has accomplished is how thoroughly this great player has trashed his historical standing.
He was the guy who could — could — have challenged Honus Wagner for the title of greatest shortstop ever.
Wagner played a century ago, and nobody’s close to him still.
The argument is over who’s runner up — Jeter or Ripken, Vaughn or Yount, Smith or Banks. None of them match up to The Flying Dutchman. The 15th greatest shortstop, whoever he may be —Nomar Garciaparra? — is closer to the second place guy than the second place guy is to Wagner.
A-Rod might have challenged for Wagner’s title, but he took himself out of the running when he accepted the second banana role to Jeter on the Bronx All-Contract team. Now you can’t even take him seriously as the No. 2 All-Time Shortstop. I believed then, and believe now, that Rodriguez was the superior shortstop, but the Yankees put him at third for reasons of team politics — and, let’s face it, it’s not like they moved him to third to make room for Ronny Cedeno.
Then there’s the steroids issue.
There’s too much we don’t know on this, stuff we’ll never know. How long he really used, what he used, how prevalent it was when he used.
We don’t even really know if steroids helped hitters hit home runs. Yeah, I know it’s accepted as gospel, but we don’t know it on a scientific, empirical basis, and there’s scientific, empirical reason to doubt “performance-enhancing drugs” actually caused the home run explosion of the late 1990s-early 2000s.
(If you want details, google “Eric Walker steroids.”)
Still, Rodriguez’s admitted use of the juice stains his reputation.
It’s rather pathetic, really. Rodriguez, by all appearances, wants to be liked. This is not Ted Williams pushing away the affection of the fans.
And yet A-Rod comes across as so self-centered, so greedy, that his attempts to connect with the public seem designed more to feed his ego than to please the masses.
He has given baseball fans six hundred home runs, and considerably less joy.
Edward Thoma is a Free Press staff writer. He is at 344-6377 or at ethoma@mankatofreepress.com. He also has a baseball blog at www.mankatofreepress.com.
