Pumpkin Eater

Alex Rodriguez cheated. Took the easy way. Lied. And if he really does have faith, as he said after the Red Sox game Sunday, he knows he’s right out of Pinocchio.

His lawyer, however, appears to have no idea what a gigantic donkey he himself is.

To recap —

Ryan Dempster missed Rodriguez with his first try, plonking him with his second — in the same at bat. He was clearly throwing at him, and he should have been ejected.

Later, Rodriguez helped his team win with an RBI groundout and a colossal home run that, in baseball parlance, means screw you.

The next day Major League Baseball said essentially the same thing to Rodriguez lackey and lawyer, Joe Tacopina.

I say these — including the part about tossing Dempster — as a Sox fan. Hate the Yankees. And based on, oh, every single one of these types of things that get played out in the media every time for like forever, Rodriguez did what MLB said he did, and is what he is demonstrating himself to be, every time he opens his mouth.

And then his lawyer said, “I can’t talk about stuff” because of confidentiality agreements.

This is the guy who kills his parents and pleads for the court’s mercy because he’s an orphan. Because there is a way — assuming into account all possible legalities and technicalities — for everyone to let Rodriguez says publicly as much as he likes. As he does now.

Whatever it would take, whichever side would have to waive whatever dealios, there is a way.

Yahoo!’s Tim Brown says simply, and to both parties, bring it.

[Brown, by the way, is the guy to read on this. He writes about baseball the way Rod Carew or Tony Gwynn played it: with elegance and class, making contact nearly every time, and getting tons of hits. Think Ichiro. Jeff Passan writes like my dog plays baseball. But I digress.]

The one corrective I suggest is that the bit from the lawyer wasn’t even good enough to be a bluff. If he tried it in an actual poker game it would technically be known as bullshit.

Watching Rodriguez jerk his team around — right, they don’t want you to play — helps me hate them a little less.

A little.

Even more, I hope my Red Sox don’t do that again. Though we know it will come back on them, next time they play the Evil Empire.

Instead, I hope they take my wife’s advice, and walk Rodriguez every time he’s up. She says every team should.

Hitting him is basic and boring, not to mention lying, cheating, and taking the easy way. Instead, refuse to pitch to him. Walk him every time. If he insists he “just wants to play” … OK let him. His on-base percentage will go through the roof.

But he won’t hit another home run, not ever.

And his lawyer could stop braying to all fields.

Not that he would.

 

Note: MLB fined and suspended Ryan Dempster, and
Joe Girardi was fined, for their parts in Sunday’s events.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Read More »

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Read More »

He’s the Guy

Those social media posts of ‘this moment in this famous film was totally unscripted!!!’ as if that by itself makes it better miss the point. Moat unscripted material, like most ideas, inventions, ideas, notions, &c … fails — such is the nature of creativity: the best stuff, it is devoutly to be wished, sticks around;

Read More »

‘Round Here

Imagine someone, potentially anyone, even you, perhaps, but let us, in any case, say. Yes, you. You pull into the diner – Earl’s, Norm’s, Dinah’s, something like that. A sort-of Googie architecture … but maybe not quite, as if it’d been a little late for the Space Age, and late is the one thing you

Read More »

Random

Words on Silence

Silence is the real. Words lie on top. + To be alone with the Alone He drapes himself in silence Art, too, is the fruit of silence Silence is the privilege of the brave Silent love can only grow in humility What is extraordinary is always silent Silence strips man and makes him like a

Read More »

Bread

“We’re sorry,” said the man, pointing. “We ain’t much here.” The woman, they guessed his wife by the way she puttered around, doing many small things but nothing really, was shaking her head. The two were indicating the table, which indeed was sparse: bread of some kind, though it looked fresh baked at least, with

Read More »

An Epic For Our Time

Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” is like cram, the bread the dwarves eat for weeks as they explore The Lonely Mountain — and for much longer as men and elves lay them siege. It sustains but does not nourish, providing energy but no taste. But let Tolkien tell it: “I don’t know the recipe, but it

Read More »

Related

Being That Guy

Once after one of my MFA professors had said the work we were reading was neither good nor original, the student who’d produced the pages wailed, But … but this actually happened! So what? He said. * I think François Truffaut said everyone in fiction is crazy, and the problem is to render this craziness

Read More »

Drudge Report

Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t. It would be odd if she

Read More »

Burning and Bleeding

Of mercy’s fire and blood Mercy burns, wrote Mary Flannery O’Connor, by which she meant … well, let’s think on it for a minute or so, before we say. For we have ideas of mercy, several actually, and we must discard them all the time, and destroy them if can, as quickly as supernaturally possible.  One

Read More »

Cursing With God

More battle scenes please Once teaching a high school American Literature class — and let me tell you, once is enough —a student he says, “I don’t understand The Red Badge of Courage.  It’s a war book, but there are hardly any battle scenes.  I don’t get it.” So we did a little Socratic dialogue, and

Read More »