Long-time reader, first-time poster.
As a Red Sox fan it took me a while to come to grips with this, but... I can no longer deny it. I've been loving A-Rod's recent hot hitting. His treatment last year at the hands of the NY tabloids and many Yankees fans was so extreme and so shit-headed that I've found myself secretly rooting for him now and actually enjoying it when he confounds expectations and sticks it to his haters with a game-winning HR.
It's a funny thing though: at what point do I stop rooting for him? His pro-Yankees detractors kept piling on A-Rod to the point that it seemed like they wanted him to fail. But while they've blatantly enjoyed casting him as the scapegoat, what they would have preferred all along of course would have been to be able to lionize him - if only he'd get a big hit. And while it's certainly funny to watch them suddenly fall all over themselves cheering for him, is it really proper for me to derive this weird satisfaction from their hypocrisy? I guess what I'm really feeling is a sense of superiority over the folks in New York who've run A-Rod down so much. "I would never be such a two-faced fan as that."
I'm worried about the rightness of my sympathy for A-Rod because really he is winning games for the team I despise. It only seems like he's sticking it to his haters; those haters are all Yankees fans and are enjoying A-Rod's hitting far more than me. If he keeps it up, eventually they'll forget how much they despised him in '06 and love him like their own. No matter how much smugness this would afford me, why would I want to cheer for this process? After all this crap that went before, how disgusting of a love-in will it be if/when he's finally accepted as a 'true Yankee'? Imagine all the talk of redemption and 'earning his pinstripes' etc. etc. Ecch. Dammit, maybe I do want him to fail.
In any case, the answer to his whole conundrum is really only six hours away: I stop rooting for him when he steps in against the Sox. So here's hoping he goes o-fer the weekend with about 10 K's.
P.S. Tribe fans: Joe Borowski. WTF?
2 comments:
First, I have the luxury of writing this after Borowski redeemed himself, but anyways I'm feeling OK about the guy. That outing was dreadful but it WAS the Yanks and the coup de grace poured on by the hottest hitter ever (?) Many players will hit 30 RBIs over the course of the whole season and call it alright.
Second, if Baseball God has a sense of irony and justice he'll let A-Rod shattter the RBI and HR records by the beginning of September, overshadowing Bonds passing Aaron around the same time with a 330-footer over the left field wall in Pittsburgh, on an overcast afternoon on $2 beer day, to a chorus of un-family friendly chants. Meanwhile, the Yankees will be 7 games out of first at 68-64, fighting a pitched battle with the Orioles for second place in the East, a moot point anyway since the Tigers are 10 games ahead of them both for the wild card.
If this situation or its rough equivalent fails to materialize, we can reevaluate our moral footing together.
Concerning Alex-Rod; is he retarded? Seriously, he has the brain of a 12 year old. Yes, his start is fantastic (although not enought to redeem my fantasy squad, apparently) but he is flipping out like he just got a moped for his birthday.
Unless he goes on to have the most magnanimous season in history (Maybe 4% chance, I mean, he IS really good at baseball) at some point he will get an out to end a game or something, and I'm positive Yankees fans will go right back to booing him.
He has the psyche of a small child. Can anyone recall an athlete with such a thin skin, going both ways? I mean, not just being offended when booed, but also flipping the fuck out when the crowd cheers for him? And thus acting like a total asshole?
At first I agreed with G-Ferg, I enjoyed him showing Yankees fans to be moronic goofballs, but now I want the Rod to wallow in mediocrity forever. I thought I hated watching him whine, it turns out that gloating is even more unappealing.
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