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2010년 9월 30일 목요일

[2010-09-29] 13년 연속 30-100 (14번째)

A-Rod hits No. 30

*13년 연속 30홈런-100타점 : 신기록 (종전 팍스 12년 연속)

*14번의 30홈런-100타점 : 최고기록 (2위 팍스-루스-매니 라미레스 12회)

*13년 연속 30홈런 : 타이기록 (배리 본즈)

*13년 연속 100타점 : 신기록 (종전 팍스-게릭 12년 연속)

*30홈런 14회 : 2위 기록 (1위 행크 애런 15회)

*100타점 14회 : 신기록 (종전 팍스-게릭-루스 13회)

2010년 8월 8일 일요일

600홈런과 숫자들...

Alex Rodriguez and the 600 Home Run Club, by the numbers

It took him awhile, but on Wednesday afternoon, Alex Rodriguez became just the seventh man in baseball history to hit 600 home runs. A-Rod is the youngest to reach the mark by a year and a half, and the first non-outfielder to accomplish the feat. The milestone home run came with a 2-0 count and one man on base against Blue Jays righty Shaun Marcum in the bottom of the first inning of a scoreless game. Here is a breakdown of all 600 of his home runs as well as a look at how Rodriguez stacks up against the other members of the 600 club.

Who

Most victimized teams: Angels (67), Orioles (51), Blue Jays (51), Twins (45), Red Sox (45)

Most victimized pitchers: Bartolo Colon (8), Ramon Ortiz (8), David Wells (8), Tim Wakefield (7), Jarrod Washburn (7)

Members of 300-Win Club: Roger Clemens (2), Tom Glavine (1)

Cy Young award winners: Bartolo Colon (8), Barry Zito (5), Chris Carpenter (3), Clemens (2), Doug Drabek (2), Cliff Lee (2), Johan Santana (2), Glavine (1), Dwight Gooden (1), Zack Greinke (1), Roy Halladay (1), Orel Hershiser (1), Pedro Martinez (1), Jack McDowell (1), Jake Peavy (1)

Cy Young award winners in their Cy Young seasons: Colon, 2005 (4); Martinez, 1999 (1)

Brothers: Jered (4) and Jeff Weaver (1); Orlando (4) and Livan Hernandez (3)

Righties: 454 (16.6 PA/HR)

Lefties: 146 (17.0 PA/HR)

What

First: off Tom Gordon, Royals, June 12, 1995, two-out solo homer in the fourth inning at the Kingdome with Mariners trailing 8-3

By runs: Solo (310), two-run (206), three-run (63), grand slams (21)*

By game situation: go-ahead (204), game-tying (48), walk-off (9)

Multi-homer games: two homers (52), three homers (3)

*Rodriguez is tied with Manny Ramirez for second all-time in grand slams. Lou Gehrig leads with 23.

When

Season highs: 57 (2002), 54 (2007), 52 (2001), 48 (2005), 47 (2003)

Postseason: ALCS (7), ALDS (5), World Series (1)

All-Star Game: 1 (Coors Field, 1998)

Month (regular season): August (122), July (106), May (104), September/October (95), March/April (87), June (86)

Inning: First (110), Sixth (89), Third (78), Seventh (63), Fourth (59), Eighth (59), Fifth (58), Second (39), Ninth (36), Eleventh (3), Tenth (2), Twelfth (2), Fifteenth (1), Sixteenth (1)

By position: Shortstop (344)*, Third Base (245), Designated Hitter (11)

By position in the batting order: Third (223), Fourth (217), Second (118), Fifth (32), Ninth (6), First (2), Seventh (1), Sixth (1)

Count: 0-0 (104), 0-1 (70), 1-0 (62), 1-1 (61), 3-2 (55), 2-2 (51), 2-1 (49), 1-2 (43), 2-0 (41), 3-1 (38), 0-2 (21), 3-0 (2), unknown (3)

Runners on base: Bases empty (310); First base occupied (220); Men on, but first base empty (70)

Run differential: Tied (169), +/-1 (134), +/-2 (76), +/-3 (79), +/-4 or more (142)

*Rodriguez moved to third base one home run shy of Cal Ripken Jr.'s record for home runs as a shortstop.

Where

Ballparks: Yankee Stadium (124), Ballpark in Arlington (96), Kingdome (60), Safeco Field (39), Angel Stadium (37)

Cities: New York (155), Seattle (99), Arlington (96), Anaheim (37), Toronto (32)

Inactive Parks: Yankee Stadium (124), Kingdome (60), Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome (21), Tiger Stadium (6), Milwaukee County Stadium (3), Shea Stadium (2), Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium (1), 3Com Park at Candlestick Point (1), Jack Murphy/Qualcomm Stadium (1),

Parks in which he has played but not homered (by PA, active parks in italics): Wrigley Field (15), Busch Stadium II (14), Citizens Bank Park (14)*, Target Field (12), Estadio Hiram Bithorn (11), Tokyo Dome (9), Land Shark Stadium (5)

*Rodriguez did homer in Citizens Bank Park in Game 3 of the 2009 World Series

600-home run club

Statistics through each players' first 600 home runs only (NOTE: All-Star Game and postseason home runs do not count toward a player's career totals):

Career home-run leaders: Barry Bonds (762), Hank Aaron (755), Babe Ruth (714), Willie Mays (660), Ken Griffey Jr. (630), Sammy Sosa (609), Alex Rodriguez (600)

Age at 600th: Rodriguez (35 years, 8 days), Ruth (36 years, 196 days), Aaron (37 years, 81 days), Bonds (38 years, 16 days), Mays (38 years, 139 days), Griffey Jr. (38 years, 202 days), Sosa (38 years, 221 days)

PA between 599 and 600: Rodriguez (51), Griffey Jr. (27), Mays (23), Sosa (13), Bonds (13), Aaron (1), Ruth (1)

PA/HR: Sosa (16.2), Rodriguez (16.7), Bonds (17.0), Griffey Jr. (17.4), Mays (18.0), Aaron (18.6)

AB/HR: Bonds (13.7), Sosa (14.40) Rodriguez (14.43), Griffey Jr. (15.1), Mays (15.9), Aaron (16.7)

HR as a percentage of hits: Sosa (25.4 percent), Bonds (24.9), Griffey Jr. (22.9), Rodriguez (22.8), Mays (20.5), Aaron (19.2)

Grand Slams in first 600 homers: Rodriguez (21), Griffey Jr. (15), Ruth (14), Aaron (13), Bonds (11), Sosa (9), Mays (7)

Walk-offs: Ruth (11), Sosa (10), Rodriguez (9), Bonds (6), Mays (5), Aaron (4), Griffey Jr. (4)

Pinch-hit homers: Mays (5)*, Griffey Jr. (5), Bonds (3), Aaron (2), Ruth (1), Sosa (1), Rodriguez (0)

Inside-the-park: Ruth (10), Mays (6), Bonds (3), Griffey Jr. (3), Sosa (2), Aaron (1), Rodriguez (0)

All-Star Game: Mays (3), Aaron (2), Bonds (2), Ruth (1)**, Griffey Jr. (1), Rodriguez (1), Sosa (0)

Postseason: Ruth (15), Rodriguez (13), Bonds (9), Aaron (6), Griffey Jr. (6), Sosa (2), Mays (1)

World Series: Ruth (15), Bonds (4), Aaron (3), Rodriguez (1), Mays (0), Griffey Jr. (0), Sosa (0)

*Mays' 600th home run was a pinch-hit homer. Mays hit for rookie George Foster with the game tied 2-2 in the seventh and hit a two-run homer that provided the winning margin for the Giants. **Ruth hit the first ever All-Star Game home run, in 1933.

No. 600 is just a mile marker on Rodriguez's road past Bonds

Alex Rodriguez's interminable run to his 600th career home run wasn't greeted with the kind of breathless anticipation that we associate with round-number baseball milestones. While many are quick to point to Rodriguez's confessed steroid use and the general impression that all hitting statistics from the late 20th and early-21st centuries are tainted, something more banal is in play. Whereas 600 home runs was a historic barrier as recently as 2001, with just three players having ever reached that number, three more hit their 600th homers over the next seven seasons. Rodriguez's accomplishment means that more players have hit their 600th homer in the last decade than did in the first 125 years of baseball history. A 600th home run simply isn't as special as it was just 10 years ago.

Moreover, 600 homers, which A-Rod finally reached on Wednesday against the Blue Jays after a drought of almost two weeks, isn't seen as an achievement for Rodriguez so much as a mile marker. An All-Star at 20, a quarter-billionaire at 25, a member of the 400-homer and 500-homer clubs at a younger age than anyone else, and still a very good player at 35, Rodriguez is expected to shatter the all-time home-run record, currently held by Barry Bonds with 762. There's such an inevitability to this that $12 million of Rodriguez's compensation under his 10-year contract with the Yankees is tied to his hitting the record-tying and record-setting longballs.

It is inevitable. Rodriguez is still relatively young for an all-time great, having turned 35 last Tuesday, and his skills remain largely intact even after hip surgery in 2009. He may never run the bases or rack up steals -- he currently has 299 with an 81 percent success rate -- the way he did before the injury, and his lateral range at third base has been significantly diminished. At the plate, though, he's still a force, even in one of the worst seasons of his career. (Note: All advanced stats are entering Wednesday's game against the Blue Jays.) The chart at right shows Rodriguez's worst full seasons by True Average (TAv is a Baseball Prospectus statistic that measures overall offensive performance, including base-stealing, and adjusts for park effects and league offensive levels).

Rodriguez's brutal slump as he chased homer No. 600 has left him with the worst stats of his career. As you can see from his True Average, it isn't that much worse than his previous lows, and we are measuring him at a low point in his season.

Looking deeper, we find that Rodriguez has been a somewhat different hitter this season, swinging at more pitches, making more contact, but less solid contact. Rodriguez has his highest rates of chasing pitches out of the zone and hitting them since 2002, which is the extent to which we have data. This weaker contact has driven down his line-drive rate (15.5 percent, tied for his lowest since 2002) and with that his batting average on balls in play (.278, a career low). (All data courtesy Fangraphs.) The increased amount of contact has lowered his walk and strikeout rates, which is one reason why his RBI count (currently 85) is so high even in an off-year. The biggest difference, however, is in his HR/FB rate. For his career, Rodriguez hits a homer on 23 percent of his fly balls. In 2010 that number is off by nearly half, to 12.6 percent. This number is a skill for batters (it tends to be a constant for pitchers, around 10 percent), and given that the biggest difference between Rodriguez in 2010 and in previous years is in his home-run rate, it seems to hold the key to his apparent "off-year."

Putting it all together, it seems that Rodriguez has made a conscious decision to move away from a take-and-rake style, to be more aggressive at the plate. The tradeoff has cost him solid contact, as shown by the loss of line drives, and possibly some power, as shown by what's happening to his fly balls. What's strange is that this is the opposite pattern shown by hitters as they age; usually, aging hitters will swing less, walk more and trade contact for power. As is always the case, Alex Rodriguez confounds expectations.

Of course, we're dancing around the real issue here, which has nothing to do with 600 or even 700 home runs. Will Rodriguez break Bonds' record? He needs another 163 homers. Over the past three seasons, he has hit a home run every 19.3 plate appearances, with a big falloff this season (one every 27 plate appearances). If that three-year number were to rise slightly every season, to 19.5, then 20.5, etc., reflecting a slow decline, Rodriguez would need about another 3,700 plate appearances, seven seasons at his current pace, to break the record at the age of 42 early in 2018. His contract runs through 2017, so barring catastrophe or a massive performance decline, he'll have a job through then. Even after hip surgery last year, even having an off-year this season, even working on the fly to change his approach at the plate, Rodriguez has such a head start on the field thanks to being an all-time great at the age of 20 that he can face some loss of skills at a relatively early age and still be a favorite to break the all-time home-run record using a fairly conservative projection of his performance from ages 35-41.

Rodriguez's early start leaves him plenty of room to decline, as well as to suffer the minor injuries that often chip away at an older player's at-bats, and still chase down Bonds with room to spare. The chart at right offers one very conservative estimate of the remainder of his career, beginning with the rest of 2010:

If this path were to hold, Rodriguez would hit his 763rd home run early in the the 2018 season. I'll take April 14th, 2018, off the Orioles' Jamie Moyer.

As you look at the all-time home-run list, you see possible paths for Rodriguez. Bonds, controversially, hit 317 homers after 34. Babe Ruth, not remembered for his longevity, roped 198 homers after 34. At the other end of the spectrum, Willie Mays had his last big year at 34 and hit just 155 more homers. Ken Griffey Jr., once considered a challenger to Aaron's mark, hit just 129 homers after 34. Sammy Sosa finished eighth in the NL MVP voting at 34 and was out of the league two years later (he came back after a missed season before retiring for good).

The model for Rodriguez, however, isn't any of those players. If you look at Baseball-Reference.com, you find that through age 33 -- through last season -- the player Rodriguez most resembles statistically is Hank Aaron. Aaron hit 245 of his homers after 34, admittedly becoming an extreme version of the all-or-nothing hitter discussed earlier. (Aaron had just 54 doubles and three triples in a four-year span starting in 1972, while hitting 106 homers in those seasons.) Rodriguez is a right-handed batter with power to all fields, good plate discipline without being a high-walks guy, and a track record of consistency. It is Aaron whose path he will most likely take over the next decade, continuing to hit for power as some of his other skills deteriorate, doing so well enough to be an asset to a good team even as more of his value becomes tied to his home-run hitting. Rodriguez, like Aaron, will finish his career strong, breaking Bonds' record and eventually pushing the career home-run mark into the 800s.

For more from Joe Sheeha, read his newsletter or follow him on Twitter.

Latest Alex Rodriguez milestone nothing but a hollow number

NEW YORK -- Dozens of flashbulbs greeted Alex Rodriguez's first-inning swing Wednesday afternoon, and when he connected with the pitch from Toronto's Shaun Marcum, the 47,659 fans in attendance at Yankee Stadium stood and cheered as the ball arced over the center-field wall to become Rodriguez's 600th career home run. As he rounded the bases behind Derek Jeter, who had been on first base, the scoreboard congratulated Rodriguez and then there was a procession of hugs with every teammate in front of the empty dugout.

Rodriguez had just become only the seventh player in baseball history to reach that milestone. Had it not been for a protective netting hanging just beyond the center field fence, the ball would have landed in Monument Park, the ballpark museum where plaques celebrate Yankees legends. At such a moment, it was natural to wonder if Rodriguez himself will ever go where his historic homer nearly did.

"We're happy for him," said Jeter, whose spot in Monument Park has long been secured. "Anytime you're talking about an accomplishment like this, not that many people have done it."

Rodriguez certainly took his time joining the exclusive 600 Club, needing almost two weeks and 47 at-bats after parking No. 599 on July 22 against the Royals. After failing again on Tuesday night, Rodriguez said he spoke with Jeter at some length, in which his teammate shared his similar experience in chasing and passing a significant number -- in Jeter's case, Lou Gehrig's franchise hits record. "No question I was pressing to get it out of the way," said Rodriguez on Wednesday. "It's definitely a special number. I'm certainly proud of it. I'll cherish it for a long, long time."

It's hard to know how many others will. The public has quickly grown weary of tainted power numbers. Bonds' push past Aaron -- which came just four days after A-Rod hit his 500th in the summer of 2007 -- was greeted with rolled eyes and groans outside of San Francisco because it seemed to be a personal assault on a clean legend. When Rodriguez hit no. 500 exactly three years to the day before he reached 600, he was being looked at as the non-steroid tainted savior of the home run record, the one who would pry it away from BALCO Barry. Now, however, Rodriguez is just another disgraced power hitter of the Steroid Era, having been outed and subsequently confessed to using steroids between 2001 and 2003.

How much did steroids help Rodriguez? Even if all they did was increase his bat speed to catch up to balls he wouldn't otherwise have hit, it's fair to say he wouldn't be at 600 right now without them. It may also have added a few extra feet to his blasts, but A-Rod has never been a just-enough home-run hitter. Over the past five years, a period outside his confessed steroid use, he averaged 409 feet per home run. Even noted longball thief Torii Hunter admitted he had never come close to taking one away from Rodriguez.

"Whenever he hit a home run, I was watching," Hunter, the Angels' center fielder, said. "I was amazed with my mouth wide open like 'wow.' When he hit a home run, it wasn't a wall scraper. Balls he hit out of the park, don't worry about running after them."

Indeed, Rodriguez has always been more of a hitter with power than a true slugger. His swing is smooth and compact, yet explosive, making his power a little deceptive. Home runs are simply part of his overall game -- he's a .303 career hitter who has won a batting title -- and perhaps that's another reason for the lackluster reception for the milestone, not to mention that his power has noticeably diminished to just one home run every 24 at bats, his worst rate since 1997.

That scandal is the biggest reason for the diminished buzz as he approached 600. Another, more positive theory, is that this is a mere stepping stone along the way to bigger things.

"He's going to hit way more than 600," Yankees reliever Chad Gaudin said. "What matters is how many he has when he retires."

One more hypothesis is that Rodriguez's career has been split among three teams, and thus no one club's fans can claim him as their own. Even though he has played more games and hit more home runs with the Yankees than he did with either the Mariners or the Rangers, he'll never be lionized as a Yankee the same way that lifers like Jeter, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera are.

Perhaps most of all, the milestone din has been missing because with A-Rod, the show has never been about just what he does on the field. At various times in his career, there have been headlines about his contracts (he has signed the two biggest deals in baseball history), his social life (dating Hollywood actresses), his sportsmanship (slapping the ball out of Bronson Arroyo's glove during the 2004 playoffs, announcing he was opting out of his contract during the 2007 World Series or yelling "Ha!" to distract Blue Jays' third baseman Howie Clark from fielding a pop-up), his associations (his overly candid admission about his fading friendship with Jeter and his connection to a Canadian doctor known for promoting human growth hormone) and his portrayal in the media (posing for a lurid photo shoot in which he wore a dingy tanktop, lounged on an old mattress and kissed his own reflection in a mirror).

This season, too, Rodriguez has been a magnet for mishap and misfortune. He jogged across a mound occupied by A's starter Dallas Braden, violating one of baseball's lesser known codes of conduct, even among the game's unwritten rules. He was the lone AL position player not to participate in the All-Star Game, reportedly because of a sore thumb that Yankees and AL All-Star manager Joe Girardi denied his player had.

"I know how much Al just wants to get down to baseball and winning games and not being the talk," Girardi said Wednesday. "I'm happy for him.

Rodriguez spoke repeatedly in recent days about how he has changed, trying to be less the center of attention while focusing less on his own statistics and more on his team's accomplishments. On Wednesday, he admitted that in the past he has failed to back up his words with actions, saying "I didn't always walk the walk" and he mentioned how he'd like to be seen as just a baseball player.

That may not be possible for someone who spends so much time in the spotlight, even when he doesn't want to. But unlike other tainted sluggers such as Bonds, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa, A-Rod has the luxury time to prove to fans and Hall of Fame voters with his all around play on the field and contrition off it that he is a different man.

Rodriguez's redemption story and journey to joining the Yankees greats in Monument Park cannot be simply about home runs. For now, this milestone is just a hollow number. Statistics alone are no longer convincing. His impact will have to come in other ways, such as his role in helping New York win last year's World Series. That's how he can change opinions about himself.

Confronting A-rod

Baseball continues to be haunted by its past following SI's revelations of steroid use in 2003 by the game's biggest star

SELENA ROBERTS , DAVID EPSTEIN

THE BOOK Alex Rodriguez: Historical Performance, an inch-thick binder 11 chapters long, read more like a fantasy novel than a free-agent evaluation. In the 2000 report on his client, agent Scott Boras unveiled a buying guide for any major league owner with a blind spot for hyperbole. Featured quotes included one that described Rodriguez, then only 25 and already a five-time All-Star, as "Michelangelo." Another proclaimed, "Yes, Alex Rodriguez can save baseball." � Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks took the bait. He signed Rodriguez to a 10-year, $252 million deal—some $110 million more than the next most lucrative offer—a contract that confirmed Boras's status as the planet's �beragent and set a platinum bar for a players' union empowered by the game's renewed vogue, a popularity driven by the game's sluggers: McGwire, Sosa, Bonds and, of course, Rodriguez. � With an outsized craving for approval and status, his identity woven into his numbers, Rodriguez felt the need to justify a contract roundly lampooned for its excess. As his former Texas teammate Bill Haselman explained in November, the scrutiny left A-Rod with "the mentality of [needing to hit] a three-run homer with nobody on base." It is that pressure, Alex Rodriguez says now, that drove him to experiment with banned substances.

In 2003, when Rodriguez won the American League MVP award as a shortstop for the Rangers, he tested positive for two anabolic steroids, four sources independently told SPORTS ILLUSTRATED in a story first reported on its website, SI.com, last Saturday. By Monday afternoon, four days after being confronted with the evidence by an SI reporter, Rodriguez admitted in an interview with ESPN that he had taken performance-enhancing drugs from 2001 to '03.

"When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure," he told the network. "I felt like I had all the weight in the world on top of me and I needed to perform and perform at a high level every day."

Hicks told SI on Monday that he never had any reason to be suspicious of Rodriguez and said that he feels betrayed by his former player's admission. "In fact, Alex used to tell me negative things about other players around the league who were suspected [of drug use]," Hicks says. "So it's ... I feel very betrayed."

Rodriguez was young—and, as Haselman recalled, very malleable—when he played for the Rangers, whose veteran clubhouse would become notorious for its steroid culture. A roll call of A-Rod's Texas teammates now sounds like a perp walk of doping suspects: Rafael Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez, Ken Caminiti, John Rocker and Randy Velarde have been publicly linked to the use of illicit performance-enhancing drugs.

"Back then it was a different culture," Rodriguez said in the Monday interview. "It was very loose. I was young. I was stupid. I was naive. And I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all times."

Rodriguez said he did not know what types of performance-enhancing drugs he used in Texas and stated that he has not taken steroids since he left the Rangers in February 2004. He added that he did not even know he had failed the 2003 drug test until a reporter showed up at a University of Miami weight room last Thursday morning.

IN A parking lot space halfway between the University of Miami's baseball complex and its athletic center sits a hulking sign of his presence: a black Maybach, the QM2 of luxury liner cars, with a silver license plate frame that has ALEX RODRIGUEZ engraved across the bottom. It's freezing by Miami standards, about 39�, making an indoor workout far preferable to fielding short hops in the icy dew of a practice field. An SI reporter walks into a sprawling but nearly empty weight room that smells of rubber mats, shows a business card and asks if Alex Rodriguez is around. "In the back," says a man in a Hurricanes jacket.

Rodriguez is dressed in a white T-shirt and sweatpants, working out with a trainer and a friend as music pounds in the background. He is not pleased to see the reporter—whom he recognizes—in a place he views as his sanctuary. "You're not supposed to be here," he says more than once. When told there are a couple of important questions that need to be asked, Rodriguez, the Yankees' All-Star third baseman, rests his arm on a parallel bar used for triceps dips and leans in to listen with a bored sigh, as if he's expecting yet another question about Joe Torre or Madonna or Derek Jeter.

Rodriguez is asked about a drug test he took in 2003 (his final year with the Rangers), which SI's sources said came up positive for two anabolic steroids—testosterone and methenolone, also known by the brand name Primobolan. Rodriguez's green eyes widen, and he looks away. He processes the question and says, "You'll have to talk to the union," as he begins to fiddle with a plate. He is asked if the positive result could be a mistake, if maybe he took a tainted supplement, if the information is wrong. He says nothing. Is there any explanation, anything further he wants to say? "I'm not saying anything," he replies and turns toward a barbell.

One more question comes his way: Three major league players told SI that Gene Orza, the chief operating officer of the Major League Baseball Players Association, tipped Rodriguez about an upcoming drug test in early September 2004. Rodriguez is asked if that is true, but he does not respond. He looks at the trainer and orders him to "get someone. [The reporter] is not supposed to be in here."

No escort necessary. The reporter hands Rodriguez her card and tells him to call if there is anything else he wants to say. Rodriguez does not call. Messages left with players' association executive director Don Fehr will not be returned over the next five days. And Orza, when approached by an SI reporter on Friday at his New York City office about the tipping allegation, will say, "I'm not interested in discussing this information with you." On Monday, Orza told The New York Times , "It's not true. Simple as that."

The results of the 2003 survey testing of 1,198 players—conducted as part of an agreement between MLB and the union to determine if it was necessary to impose a mandatory random drug-testing program, with penalties, across the major leagues in 2004—were meant to remain anonymous. However, the anonymity seemed less than assured because players were asked by testers to sign their names next to a number corresponding with their urine sample.

"The idea [behind the testing] was to get a feel for how many people were doing it," Tim Crabtree, the Rangers' player representative in 2000 and '01, said on Sunday. "Yet every test had a name attached to it. So, in that regard, did the union screw up? Yeah, I'd say they did because I don't know how you can attach a name to a sample if it's truly anonymous."

Rodriguez's testing information was found after federal agents, armed with search warrants, seized the '03 test results from Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc., of Long Beach, Calif., one of two labs used by MLB in connection with that year's survey testing. The seizure took place in April 2004 as part of the government's investigation into 10 major league players linked to the BALCO scandal—though Rodriguez himself has never been connected to BALCO. On that list of 104 positive test results was one belonging to Alex Rodriguez.

SINCE THE late 1990s baseball had been witnessing its own Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Players were aging backward, with 40-year-old pitchers throwing the heat of 20-year-olds and veteran hitters cranking out career highs in homers. But in 2003, when he was 28, Rodriguez seemingly didn't fit the profile. His impressive statistics—more than 40 home runs and 110 RBIs every season from 1998 through 2003—appeared to be authentic.

A benefit of using Primobolan, one of the steroids Rodriguez tested positive for, is that the steroid produces improved strength with minimum bulk. The drug also has relatively few side effects. Kirk Radomski, the former Mets clubhouse employee who in 2007 pleaded guilty to illegal distribution of steroids to numerous major leaguers, described in his recent book Bases Loaded how players increasingly turned to drugs such as Primobolan, in part to avoid testing positive. Primobolan is detectable for a far shorter period than the steroid previously favored by players, Deca-Durabolin.

At the same time, Rodriguez's pristine image was increasingly important not only to a commissioner's office that craved an embraceable star who would one day take the place of Barry Bonds as the alltime home run leader (POINT AFTER, page 74) but also to a players' union empowered by Rodriguez's record-breaking contract and to an agent, Boras, who was validated as the planet's best dealmaker, with A-Rod as his instrument.

The resistance to steroid testing among union officials was intense. In a panel discussion in March 2004, Orza openly mocked baseball's crackdown on steroids, saying, "I have no doubt that [steroids] are not worse than cigarettes." According to the 2007 Mitchell Report on performance-enhancing drug use in baseball, Orza stalled MLB in its attempts to test players for "reasonable cause" and declined to speak with Mitchell Report investigators. In September 2004, according to the Mitchell Report, Orza violated an agreement with MLB and tipped off a player (not named in the report) to an upcoming, supposedly random, drug test. In its statement last Saturday the players' association said, "As we have explained previously, in detail and in public, there was no improper tipping of players in 2004 about the timing of the drug tests." One major league player, however, told SI that he was forewarned by Orza in '04 that he would be tested on Sept. 24, "so make sure there's nothing in your system." Then there are the three players who told SI that Rodriguez was alerted by Orza to a coming test in September 2004, at the end of his first season as a Yankee.

THE YANKEES news this spring was supposed to ride on CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira and A.J. Burnett—nearly half a billion dollars' worth of talent the team added in the off-season in an attempt to woo fans to its new, luxury-appointed stadium. But Rodriguez will consume the discussion when he arrives at the Yankees' spring training facility in Tampa.

The details of his contract will be parsed too. The 10-year deal Rodriguez signed in November 2007 is loaded with incentives for individual achievement, its rewards most notably linked to his power. He is reportedly guaranteed $275 million and could receive a $6 million bonus each time he ties one of the top four sluggers: currently Willie Mays (660), Babe Ruth (714), Hank Aaron (755) and Bonds (762). He cashes in another $6 million by supplanting Bonds as the home run king.

Rodriguez's deal was built on home run prowess and approved by the commissioner's office. Yankees owners Hank and Hal Steinbrenner argued that Rodriguez's chase of the most glamorous record in baseball would generate such enormous revenue for the team that the player was entitled to share in the profits.

The Yankees would not comment on the structure of Rodriguez's contract—including whether bonuses could be voided if proof exists that he used performance-enhancing drugs—but baseball sources familiar with the deal say there is no language about steroids in it that would put Rodriguez at risk of losing money.

His finances are secure. His future as a Hall of Famer is not.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1151759/index.htm?eref=sisf

What would have happened if A-Rod trade to Boston went through?

What would have happened if A-Rod trade to Boston went through?

Alex Rodriguez is back in the news this week. Going into this week's four-game series against the Indians in Cleveland, A-Rod is on deck to hit his 600th career home run.

This got me to thinking ... what if A-Rod was hitting all those homers at Fenway Park as the shortstop of the Boston Red Sox?

It almost happened. Actually, it did happen for a few days, but the almighty Major League Baseball Players Association intervened, forever changing the fortunes of a bunch of ballclubs when the A-Rod-to-Fenway deal was triggered in the winter of 2003-04.

Strange, but true. The near-deal was born in Boston's anguishing weeks after Aaron Boone's walkoff home run won Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS for the Yankees and drove a stake through the heart of Red Sox Nation. The epic collapse immediately joined the Bucky Dent game and the Bill Buckner game in the pantheon of Sox chokes. It also got manager Grady Little fired and motivated the Red Sox to consider trading for A-Rod, who was then property of the Texas Rangers and in the first trimester of his quarter-billion dollar contract.

Three days after Boone's blast off Tim Wakefield, Rangers owner Tom Hicks called the Red Sox to see if they were interested in trading for A-Rod. The Rangers wanted out of the Rodriguez pact and said they'd send the slugger to Boston for Nomar Garciaparra and a couple of kid pitchers.

That didn't fly, but discussions went back and forth over the course of the next two months and one week before Christmas, the Red Sox had two deals in place: Boston would send Garciaparra and reliever Scott Williamson to the White Sox for Magglio Ordonez and prospects; Boston would also trade Manny Ramirez to the Rangers for Rodriguez. Sox owner John Henry had met with A-Rod and Rodriguez allowed a restructuring of his contract which creatively lowered the annual value (from $27 million to $20 million) and enabled the Red Sox to skirt some luxury tax. That's when player rep Gene Orza stepped in and killed the deal.

Hicks subsequently sent a letter to Rangers season ticket holders, telling them A-Rod would be Texas' opening day shortstop in 2004. Then the Rangers held a press conference and named A-Rod captain.

But it wasn't over. Boone blew out his knee playing pickup basketball in mid-January and on Valentine's Day 2004, the Yankees acquired A-Rod and his full contract from the Rangers in exchange for Alfonso Soriano. With Derek Jeter cemented at shortstop in New York, A-Rod agreed to move to third base for the Yankees. There was no "restructuring" of A-Rod's mega-deal.

The Sox were humiliated in that moment. The New York Times ran a Page 1 story headlined, "Summer or Winter, Yankees Show Red Sox How to Win.'' Texas scribe Randy Galloway wrote, "The biggest doofus organization in all of this turns out to be the Boston Red Sox ... in the ultimate Curse of the Bambino, A-Rod ends up in the hands of the hated King George.''

This is one of those It's a Wonderful Life themes where a moment in time changes the course of history for every moment thereafter. George Bailey gets to see the horrors of a world in which he'd never been born, so he re-thinks his wish and everyone lives happily ever after.

That's pretty much the deal in Boston. Without A-Rod, the 2004 Red Sox went on to win their first World Series in 86 years. Even better, they did it at the expense of Rodriguez' Yankees, coming back from a 3-0 deficit in the American League Championship Series. Just about every sports tavern in New England features a photograph of Sox captain Jason Varitek with his catcher's mitt in A-Rod's face from a July '04 brawl which sparked Boston's comeback summer.

The Red Sox went on, of course, to win a second World Series in 2007. Meanwhile, A-Rod stewed and struggled in New York. He put up good numbers every regular season, then flopped in October. He was also outed as a steroid cheater. Sox fans, already happy to razz Rodriguez, had new fodder. They brought "A-Roid" signs to Fenway. When A-Rod was dating the Material Girl, some Fenway fans came to the park wearing Madonna wigs.

Rodriguez finally got his World Series ring in 2009 and he's in a good place to win a couple more while he marches toward 600, 700 and maybe 800 homers. But in Boston, no one ever looks back at the winter of 2003-04 with regret. No doubt Rodriguez would have been a lot better than Marco Scutaro, Julio Lugo, Edgar Renteria, Jed Lowrie, Nick Greene and the chorus line of shortstops who've failed to fill the void left by Nomar, but in more than six seasons since it all went down, I have never once heard a Red Sox fan say, "I wish we'd gotten A-Rod.''

Dan Shaughnessy is a columnist for The Boston Globe. Read more of his columns here.

Struggle to milestone homer is same, but A-Rod is very different

NEW YORK -- Alex Rodriguez's last attempt to reach a major home run milestone was painful to watch. Remember? He had gotten to 499, in the summer of 2007, faster than anyone at the start of the season could have conceived was possible, even for him. He was about to turn 32 years old, and he was at the peak of his powers. He had hit 14 home runs during a torrid April, then five in May, then nine in June, and then -- after he'd crushed 499, an eighth-inning two-run shot off the Royals' Gil Meche on July 25 in Kansas City -- seven in July. Thirty-five home runs, and August wouldn't begin for another week. Surely, everyone thought, he'd become the 500 home run club's youngest member well before the calendar's page flipped.

Then? He couldn't do it. In fact, for a while, he couldn't muster a hit of any type. Over the next 10 days, he was all but shut down by a veritable No-Star team of Royals and Orioles and White Sox, many of them pitchers who are just three years later no longer in the big leagues -- pitchers like Brian Burres and Daniel Cabrera and Ryan Bukvich and Ryan Braun (not that one) and John Parrish and Odalis Perez and Jamie Walker. After that shot off Meche, Rodriguez went hitless in his next 21 at-bats, and homerless in 28, over 37 plate appearance. He just couldn't do what he had always done. This was like seeing Lady Gaga dressed in sweatpants, or that guy from Twilight unable to pop out an abdominal muscle. You almost felt sorry for him.

When he finally got there, with a first inning, three-run bomb off Kansas City's Kyle Davies in Yankee Stadium on August 4, it seemed more a relief than an achievement. After that, he was A-Rod again, and sailed along to what was by most measures the greatest offensive season of his great career, and one of the greatest anyone has ever produced: a .314 average, 54 homers, 156 RBIs, 24 stolen bases, his third MVP award. But the memory of his mid-summer struggle to reach 500 stayed with us -- especially given what happened in the years to follow. Now, as he again chases a historic home run -- his next will be No. 600 -- it is clear that memory stayed with him.

"For me, the whole thing as I approach 600, the whole thing that I think about is the perspective of where I was when I hit 500 and how things are different now," Rodriguez said last week during what has become a rarity for him over the past two seasons: a question and answer session with the assembled media in which he expressed slightly more than quotidian platitudes. "For me, early on, all I thought it was about was accumulating numbers. Try to hit 40 or 50 and drive in 140 or 130 and hopefully make the playoffs and maybe advance, but after winning a world championship and attaining that goal you realize that it is not about [numbers]. It is about obviously winning the world championship."

Rodriguez has never been adept at expressing himself in public, even when he genuinely tries. He has often seemed overwhelmed by the idea that people are watching everything that he does and that he is performing for them. The result is that most of what he does seems somehow robotic and artificial, as if he's overly conscious of what he is doing at that moment, or supposed to be doing, instead of simply being in the moment and doing it. When he makes an out, and jogs off the field, you can almost see him thinking, "Now I am supposed to casually trot off the field, slowly but not too slowly, perhaps shaking my head a bit." After he hits an important home run: "Now I am supposed to clap my hands and raise my arms in the air, and maybe high-five the third base-coach as I pass by him." When he gives a press conference: "Be humble but confident, credit your teammates, smile a lot and talk about how you want the team to win."

The situations in which Rodriguez appears to be completely natural, completely of and in the moment, are generally when he is in action on the field -- when he torques his body to produce that beautiful swing of his, when he makes a dazzlingly athletic defensive play. There is no time for forethought or artificiality then; nature takes over, and he looks, for once, comfortable. When he was chasing 500, however, during those frustrating 10 days, the other part of his personality seemed to bleed into that which had previously been inviolable. Instead of just hitting, as only he can, it was as if he were saying to himself, even as the pitch came in, "It is time for me, Alex Rodriguez, to join the 500 home-run club ... now." Of course, it wouldn't work. Baseball -- and, for most people, life -- doesn't work like that, even when you're Alex Rodriguez and they're Ryan Braun, not that one.

Why did Rodriguez develop as such? Part of it, we can imagine, is that since he was a teenager he had been A-Rod, among the most talented baseball players in the world. So talented that he was rarely questioned or criticized about anything by anyone who mattered to him. So talented that everything came so easy to him that he never had to think about changing. Angels center fielder Torii Hunter was born nine days before Rodriguez in 1975, was selected by the Twins 20th overall in the 1993 draft in which the Mariners picked Rodriguez first and has battled him in the American League for parts of 14 seasons now. He remembered the other day his first ever encounter with Rodriguez.

"It was 1992, and we were in Boise, Idaho, playing together on the Junior Olympic team, the South team," Hunter recalled. "This tall kid, a quarterback from Westminster High School in Miami walked in, 6'3", hands big as hell, a shortstop. Someone hit a groundball up the middle, he fielded the ball between his legs, turned around and threw the guy out at first. I'm like, damn, this guy is a straight athlete! Then he comes up to the plated with a wooden bat -- he was the only one using a wooden bat -- this taped up wooden bat, and boom, hits one 430 feet. We were both 16 years old, among the youngest there.

"I hadn't seen many baseball players," Hunter continued, "but these were like the top 100 baseball players in the country, and nobody stood out more than this guy. I go back home, and I tell everybody in my hometown in Arkansas. I said, dude, there's this guy named Alex Rodriguez. He's going to be the best player ever. They're like, better than Shawon Dunston? Because everybody believed in Shawon Dunston in my 'hood in Arkansas -- I don't know why, because he was playing in San Francisco, but they loved Shawon Dunston. I'm like, yes, better than Shawon Dunston. Ten times better than Shawon Dunston."

For the next decade or so, Rodriguez continued being 10 times better than Shawon Dunston. That he was 10 times better than Shawon Dunston may have led him to believe that anything he said or did (including, it turned out, taking PEDs) was the right thing and that those who criticized him were simply wrong, or jealous, because he was 10 times better than Shawon Dunston.

Then came his agonizing quest for his 500th home run, a crack in the façade. Then, in early 2009, the façade crumbled altogether. It was a perfect, image-shattering storm, beginning with the February revelation by SI's Selena Roberts and David Epstein that Rodriguez had used PEDs, and a month later the release of an embarrassing Details magazine photo shoot in which Rodriguez kissed himself in a mirror, wearing a muscles-revealing sleeveless shirt. Rodriguez at first tried to deal with the situation the only way he knew how, by putting on another show of artificiality at the press conference in the tent behind the third base stands at the Yankees' spring training home in Tampa. This time, however, no one was buying it just because he was so much better than Shawon Dunston. No one believed that he might actually cry during the 32-second silence in which he tried to squeeze out a tear. The emperor had no clothes; everybody knew it, and, crucially, he finally knew it. "I miss simply being a baseball player," he said plaintively that day, and after that day's disaster, he seemed committed to becoming that, and pretty much only that.

Later that spring, Rodriguez had surgery to repair a torn labrum in his hip and went away to Colorado to rehab. When he came back, returning for an early May road series against the Orioles, he was different, and still is different. "I think after coming back from Colorado and talking to most of the guys in Baltimore last year it's a lot easier, it's a lot more enjoyable when you think about doing the little things to help the team win," he said last week. That Rodriguez is still not a fluid communicator is underscored by tortured quotes such as that one, but these days he seems to finally understand this about himself: that people will no longer agree with or believe or validate whatever he says simply because he is so very good at baseball, and that it's not worth trying anymore. So he doesn't, not often.

A-Rod at 600 is a different person than was A-Rod at 500 because he now understands that the only thing that is fully under his control is what he does on the field. He understands that no one will buy the rest of his act anymore, so he is careful to keep it out of the public's view. That development seems to have unburdened him, suggest opponents and teammates. "For me, it seems like he's having a lot more fun -- a lot more fun," says Hunter. "He was always preparing himself early on in his career, he was always focused. He didn't say much at all on the field or anything like that. Now, he's cracking jokes, he's laughing more. Don't get me wrong -- he still prepares himself. We're in batting practice, and we see A-Rod in the outfield running, doing different drills, and I'm pretty sure he's watching film inside the clubhouse. But he's having more fun too."

His unburdening has also helped him to help his team win in ways other than his offensive production. "I can only speak for the last two years, but he's been a great teammate," says CC Sabathia, who spent one of his first days as a Yankee two years ago standing off to the side in one of his trademark many-XL t-shirts, watching his new teammate conduct his PED-use-admitting press conference, and probably wondering what he'd gotten himself into. "I know he cares a lot about the younger guys, teaching them and talking to them. Him and [Robinson] Cano are really close -- he's always talking to him. He tells guys what they need to be told, but he doesn't put himself out there and draw attention to it."

Last October, when I asked catcher Francisco Cervelli which of his teammates had most helped him transition from a .233-hitting minor leaguer to a rookie big leaguer who batted .298 and seamlessly filled in for an injured Jorge Posada, his answer was as quick as it was surprising. "A-Rod," he said. "He helps me with everything -- everything. I learn so many things from him, calling the game, offensively, defensively, game situations, everything. He's the man. Maybe he saw at the beginning that I want to work, I want to play, and he wanted to help me. I feel lucky to have him."

There is no doubt, however, about the identity of the person whom the new A-Rod has helped most of all: Rodriguez himself. He is no longer far and away the game's greatest offensive player. He is nearly 35, he has undergone a major hip surgery, and, it must be said, he is no longer a user of PEDs -- at least, we must assume that he is not. He is now just a very dangerous hitter -- perhaps Top 20, no longer Top 1. But what he has gone through between home runs 500 and 600 -- what, more properly, he put himself through -- has left him accepting of that, comfortable being what he is, and no longer desperately trying to convince himself and others that he is something even more. It has quite obviously been freeing for him. "I'm a little more relaxed," he said the other day, simply. We saw that last October, when he all at once cast off his reputation as a postseason choker and slugged six homers and drove in 18 runs in leading the Yankees to a World Series title -- their 27th, his first.

In between home runs 500 and 600, A-Rod the legend has died -- for us and for him -- and Alex Rodriguez the man was revealed. And it's Alex Rodriguez the man who will chase 700 home runs, and 763, and on from there.