Alex Rodriguez hates the Yankees and the Yankees hate Alex Rodriguez. Nothing changed yesterday amid the calmed tones and spin doctoring.
If the Yankees could do what the Patriots did and just, poof, make Aaron Hernandez and the majority of his contract go away, they would do that quicker than you can say Madonna. But major league pacts are guaranteed; the Yankees owe roughly $100 million over the next 4 1/2 seasons to A-Rod and they still want to see if they could get something for all that money.
And if A-Rod wants to play major league baseball — which he insists he does — than his choices are pretty much limited to the Yankees, because teams would not exactly line up for a soon-to-be-38-year-old with two surgically repaired hips, more baggage than Louis Vuitton and Bud Selig going all Javert on him.
In other words, besides adding another chapter to the ever-expanding soap opera that is Rodriguez’s life, nothing much has changed today from the 10-year relationship of player and franchise — they hate each other, yet still need each other.
There is no doubt the Yanks would be better on the field if A-Rod could play third rather than the current crew of Long Island Ducks. And Rodriguez would be best served trying to save whatever reputation is salvageable by being a good player and a good teammate while helping the Yankees win.
Of course, nothing is quite this simple in A-Rod World, where paranoia and conspiracy flourish like an “X-Files” episode, incubated naturally by the growing distrust and distaste that team and player possess for each other.
So there are members of the Yanks who see an A-Rod tweet about being cleared to resume play as a tweak — yes, a tweet as tweak — at Cashman for not agreeing to the quickest possible return to action. Or as Rodriguez trying to rush back on the field for a self-serving reason tied to the Biogenesis manhunt.
And the A-Rod camp will have every grassy knoll covered when the Yankees GM tells the highest-paid player to “shut the f- -k up.” It is personal. It is about protecting insurance dollars. It is about delaying him from the field until Selig’s net drops.
This is all more befitting of a sandbox or a heavily fortified bunker, since this exists mainly in the realm between too childish and too loony.
I tend to believe in Occam’s Razor — that the simplest explanations are usually the right ones. Thus, I do believe what Cashman said yesterday, that his reaction to having to deal with yet another A-Rod brushfire was instantaneous and hair-trigger rather than part of a larger bring-down-Rodriguez plot.
I also tend to believe that because the Yankees cannot make A-Rod vanish and recoup a good deal of their dough, they do want him back on the field as soon as possible, but that the organization dictates that pace, not the player.
Look, it is a poorly kept secret in the game that MLB believes it is building an airtight case that A-Rod indeed was a client in good standing of Anthony Bosch, and that a 50- or 100-game suspension will follow from that. We will see. MLB has not brought A-Rod in for a face-to-face yet because it wants to make sure it removes as much wiggle room as possible.
That process might be complete in a week or a month or, who knows? The Yanks need — yes, need — A-Rod for whatever games they can get him, unless you think he is not better even in his current condition than David Adams and Alberto Gonzalez. Yankees third basemen had a .635 OPS — 25th in the majors — and four homers, tied for the third worst going into last night. In what promises to be a tight AL East, the Yanks gladly will accept the extra win or two that Rodriguez might bring in 2013.
And for A-Rod, the high-priced lawyers and p.r. men will do what they can to keep him out of baseball jail. But all he can do to really help his image is play. At least some mass of Yankees fans will rally to his side if he performs well. Just check out how John Lackey has gone from poor performance, injury and fried chicken and beer to current ace of the Red Sox and the good graces of Fenway.
So Hal Steinbrenner spoke to A-Rod yesterday. And Cashman apologized for what even he acknowledged was an unprofessional choice of words. A-Rod, Cashman and Randy Levine put out a joint Kumbaya statement that they had all spoken and were all in mutual love again. But the realities remained the same. Neither side likes each other. Yet both need each other.