SOAR & PEACE!
Yankees rally to win 12 - inning thriller after A- Rod bonus settlement
ALL along, the Yankees asked Alex Rodriguez to act like a Yankee, even understanding the Derek Jeter bar was impossible for him, much less anyone, to reach. But finally, Alex Rodriguez did. So, 24 days before his 40th birthday, the Yankees opened their arms and locked their Milestone Man in a warm, sweet embrace no one could have imagined when he was their disgraced eyesore exiled from the game he loves in 2014.
What it meant to ARod is only everything, and if he awakened on July 4 singing “(I’m a) Yankee Doodle Dandy,” no one would have begrudged him.
His reward, for being a good teammate, for being a better hitter and slugger than anyone could have predicted, for being the Yankees’ main attraction, was AThaw doesn’t need to melt hardened hearts that will never forgive or forget the lying and the cheating about the steroids. What matters is the reconciliation, the rapprochement, between a proud franchise that has missed the playoffs two years in a row, and a contrite baseball player who is basking in this sudden redemption and desperately wants to rewrite the narrative at the end of a career that has 2 ¹/₂ years left in Pinstripes.
Add to that the efforts made by the Yankees’ highest power brokers to work out a $150,000 charitable deal that resulted in ARod getting the ball he homered on for his 3,000th hit from snagartist Zack Hample. Maybe life begins at 40 after all. “I feel very fortunate to be where we are today,” Rodriguez said before the Yankees’ 75 victory over the Rays on Brian McCann’s threerun home run in the 12th. “On the field, we’re playing solid baseball, and getting some of our injured troops back here pretty soon. I’m excited about that.
“Coming into spring training, I didn’t know what to expect, I’ve told you guys that before. But I kind of made
a commitment to myself that I wanted to keep my head down and let my bat do the talking, and try to help the team win as much as possible.”
His bat has talked 15 home runs, loudly enough for him to be in the AllStar conversation. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Stuff. And suddenly, after all the bad blood, all the litigious animosity, Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association jointly announced Friday that the Yankees and Rodriguez had “amicably resolved” the brouhaha over ARod’s contractural milestone entitlement, and that the parties had agreed that $3.5 million in charitable contributions will be made by the Yankees, with $1 million going to the following charities that have long enjoyed the support of one or both: the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, the Boys & Girls Club of Tampa, and Pitch In For Baseball; and $2.5 million going to the MLB Urban Youth Foundation.
So Say Hey to ARod tying Willie Mays with that 660th home run last month. Say Goodbye to that contentious, unsavory $6 million commercial marketability fight that cast neither side in a flattering light.
“It’s a wonderful gesture on both parts,” manager Joe Girardi said. “Relationships that get strained in life are really meant to get fixed again. And a lot of times, when you get to the other side, some of the struggles that you have, the relationship can be stronger than ever.”
Say Hey to Hample, who sat beside ARod in a pressconference room across from the Yankees clubhouse prior to the game and presented him with that 3,000th hit ball which he caught June 19 in his rightfield seat. The Yankees donated $150,000 to Pitch In For Baseball, a charity which Hample has supported since 2009 that is dedicated to maximizing the ability to play baseball in underserved communities. “I think we all did the right thing,” ARod said.
Rodriguez thanked Hal Steinbrenner, the Yankees, the union, Major League Baseball. He presented Hample with a No. 13 jersey and a pair of black bats. After Hample apologized for a regrettable tweet, a forgiving ARod smiled and said, “I have a PhD in saying dumb things over the years.”
A beaming, glowing ARod looked forward to sharing the baseball with his two young daughters. He’s in a very good place.
“The less things that he has to worry about and the more he can just worry about what he loves to do, I think it’s a huge benefit,” Girardi said.
It didn’t matter much on this night that there were no baseballs from ARod for Hample to catch, for the Yankees to retrieve for him. It didn’t matter that he grounded into a double play before walking twice and singling to right before Mark Teixeira’s threerun blast that tied the game in the eighth, walking again in the 10th and singling past the shift to right in the decisive 12th. Because here was proof that no man is an island if he doesn’t want to be: a healthy ARod, a happy ARod. Back in the Yankees family, at last.