I know everyone hates A-Rod and he’s history’s worst monster and everything, but I’m really struggling to see how this latest flap — let’s call it The STFU Affair — is being spun as “here goes A-Rod again!” instead of “wow, Brian Cashman was really out of line there.”
And make no mistake, that’s how it’s being spun already. I’ve yet to see the usual columnists weight in — I’m sure Lupica and the rest will have fun things to say about this, all of which portray A-Rod as the beast here — but when even the normally even-handed and sharp Mark Feinsand of the Daily News is saying “Only Rodriguez could turn a positive story into a negative one this quickly,” you know that this is going to turn into yet another “A-Rod is the worst” fest.
Which is insane to me.
A-Rod’s transgression here: tweeting that he was ready and eager to play:
Visit from Dr. Kelly over the weekend, who gave me the best news – the green light to play games again! http://t.co/RuzfXOJjHI
— Alex Rodriguez (@AROD) June 25, 2013
No, that message had not yet been approved for release by the Yankees yet, but (a) it was already news that was being reported by papers on Monday; and (b) is not something all that unusual in baseball. We often hear of players saying X about their readiness to rehab or come off the DL or whatever while the team says Y. We saw it in Washington just this past week with Bryce Harper. We see it many times a year. It’s something which is less-than-decorous, but it’s an inside-baseball kind of thing. Team officials care about it because they like to control the messaging for understandable reasons. The media may make note of it because any player-team disconnect is newsworthy. But about zero fans care about such things in the normal course and it’s never, ever cast as some scandalous statement.
On the other hand we have a general manager of a team telling his player, through the media, to “shut the f— up.” Think about that: when has that happened in the past? Under what circumstances is it ever considered appropriate for a boss to profanely excoriate his employee, be it privately, in front of people or, as in this case, in the press? If your boss told someone in your office that you should “shut the f— up” I don’t feel like you’d say “well, I did bring this on myself.” You’d be outraged and rightfully so. Your boss would probably be reprimanded.
Put any other player in A-Rod’s shoes here and any other GM in Cashman’s and the GM would be the one under fire here, not Alex Rodriguez. It’s not that way though because A-Rod is everyone’s favorite punching bag. That’s the only reason Cashman isn’t the one being raked over the coals here, as he should be. It’s just the latest example of A-Rod Derangement Syndrome.
