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When last we left Alexander Enmanuel Rodriguez, he finally had figured out a way to get himself into a World Series, even if it wasn't as an actual, um, player.
When last we left the Boy Wonder, he had stiff-armed the New York Yankees, watched as his agent said the Yanks could speak to him with a minimum bid of $350 million and then set sail for the open seas of free agency.
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| Could the shrewd Scott Boras have orchestrated this whole thing? It's worth pondering. (Getty Images) |
So now meet the new A-Rod.
Same as the old A-Rod.
All duded out in Yankee Doodle Dandy pinstripes. Again.
And, ah, talk about the rich getting richer. With A-Rod set to return to the Yankees on a 10-year, $275 million deal that could extend up to $300 million or so if he passes Barry Bonds and becomes baseball's all-time home run king, the list of losers pretty much is limited to the only other club that actually offered him a contract.
The, uh, Mud Hens.
"I really think the Mike Hessman thing scared them off, to be honest with you," Mud Hens spokesman Jason Griffin said Thursday, tongue firmly in cheek, while A-Rod and his people were knee-deep in contract parameters with the Yankees. "Hessman (Toledo's third baseman) is the reigning Most Valuable Player in the International League. Maybe A-Rod felt he couldn't compete with him as a fan favorite.
"I don't know if we go toward Mike Lowell now, or what we'll do. The only other thing I can think of is A-Rod was a little scared of the clause that he had to deliver 10 straight Governor's Cups (awarded annually to the International League champion)."
Well, perhaps. There's a whole lot of digesting to be done of A-Rod's whirlwind 18-day non-courtship, starting with the role played by his agent, Scott Boras.
There's no question there were some serious misjudgments and miscalculations on the part of Boras and A-Rod, beginning with the incredibly tasteless act of releasing the decision to opt out of his record $252 million contract smack in the middle of Game 4 of the World Series.
The fallout was like a Vin Diesel movie, fast and furious. A man whose general approval rating in the game over the past few years already had shriveled to a level somewhere beneath tobacco juice spittle on the dugout floor quickly became even more despised. A-Rod was ripped from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea, from front to back, from top to bottom.
Every last arrow was deserved. Every acerbic comment was warranted.
Among many disingenuous aspects of the opt-out fiasco, one that was overlooked at the time was the part of Boras' explanation that A-Rod was unsure of the Yankees' direction because he didn't know what potential free agents Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada were going to do.
One, they're the Yankees -- it isn't as if they don't have enough dough to bring people back, especially icons who have been so important to the franchise.
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Two, A-Rod could have, oh, I don't know, maybe phoned them to gauge their feelings.
Three, A-Rod met with Texas owner Tom Hicks on his last Free Agent Tour and requested a briefing on the Rangers farm system. Why a meeting of the minds with the Yankees couldn't have been conducted before the opt-out was left unexplained, though the one in Texas didn't exactly result in rings for A-Rod's fingers.
Anyway, it all provoked the utterly fascinating move that resulted in his new deal with the Yankees: An obviously wounded A-Rod approached the club without Boras, and things began to move forward.
Interesting thing now is that many are portraying Boras as finally having met his match and received his comeuppance.
Don't be so sure of that. Maybe we'll never know every juicy behind-the-scenes detail, but enough damage control was needed here, and Boras is shrewd enough, that this entire thing easily could have been orchestrated by the agent.
And if Boras is suddenly such a loser, then how do you explain the little fact that he's still going to get his cut of $275 or so million?
"A-Rod was pretty specific, 'I don't like the way this is going and I'm going to talk to the Steinbrenners myself and see what we can do,'" one industry source said. "If that's what it is, I have a little newfound respect for A-Rod.
"There's another side of me that says this is going to end up with a guy who's 42 having the highest average value by a mile that anybody's ever gotten, and could all of this have been orchestrated? Scott is not a dumb guy. He's a smart man ... maybe this was Scott figuring out a way to repair the damage, and telling A-Rod, 'You'll be a hero in New York.'"
Another major league executive with whom I spoke doesn't exactly see this as a humiliating moment for Boras, either.
"At the end of the day, he gets his percentage of whatever that contract is," the executive said. "Scott doesn't care if people hate him. He takes some bad publicity, and at the end of the day he's still got all of these great players and you've still got to deal with him."
There's also always the chance that Texas, which realizes a $21.3 million savings as a result of Boras invoking the opt-out clause, conceivably could re-invest that money in its club.
And guess what? You've maybe heard those Kenny Rogers-to-the-Rangers rumors? Yes, well, Rogers is a Boras client. So is reliever Eric Gagne, who could end up back in Texas.
The feeling here is, regarding those involved in this deal, there are no losers.
The Yankees get an incredibly productive player who on Monday will accept the 2007 AL MVP award and soon will be chasing after Bonds' all-time home run record.
A-Rod remains on baseball's biggest stage for another record-breaking contract.
And Boras gets his cut of that record-breaking deal and remains the most powerful agent in the game.
The only folks who didn't come up winners in this one are ... alas, the Mud Hens.
"We sent a couple of hats to Boras and A-Rod," Griffin said. "The only fair thing to do if he isn't going to come here is for them to send the hats back to us."