Kuzul

Jorge Posada had become something of a forgotten man around the Yankee Universe this season.

He’s always stayed in the shadows of New York’s starry landscape when you think about it, which is pretty amazing when you realize he’s one of the greatest offensive catchers to ever play the game.

If the Core Four was U2, then Posada would obviously be drummer Larry Mullen, Jr.—all brooding intensity, happy to stay in the background and do his job, but the first to call out a member of the group if they get out of line.

For posterity: Bono = Jeter (face of the franchise, polarizing, iconic), The Edge = Rivera (quiet, remarkably consistent, wholly unique), and Adam Clayton = Pettitte (likable, gray hair, profoundly underrated).

But Posada is 39 now, and his age doesn’t allow him to be the consistent factor he once was.

He was shelved for most of 2008 with a shoulder injury, missed 51 games in 2009, and has sat out 38 of the Yankees‘ first 145 contests this season.

Meanwhile, there are approximately 14 catching prospects at various levels of the organization looking to put the old dog down for good.

He’s still our Georgie Boy after all these years, however, with those ears, that smokin’ wife, and the maniacal glare that can melt an ice cap. And oh yeah, an uncanny ability to produce big hits when they truly matter.

Posada’s home run to beat the Rays in extra innings last night was incredibly important for the Yankees. In a game shaping up to be their most brutal defeat, it became the season’s greatest victory.

Not bad for one swing of the bat.

It was the type of win the Yankees haven’t had enough of this season. It showed character, and a sense of the moment. It was positively 2009-esque, which is obviously a very good thing.

There’s little doubt in my mind that the Yankees lose that game if Posada doesn’t step up. They had already squandered a 6-0 lead, and the bullpen—with the notable exception of Boone Logan—had kept their finger in the dike for too long.

Luckily, Posada (with a little help from the G.O.A.T. and Greg “Was that Jessie Barfield?” Golson) made sure the Yankees would wake up back in first place.

Stray thoughts:

– Golson’s game-ending throw to nail Carl Crawford at third was incredible—as was A-Rod’s pick—but what is Crawford doing there? Rays manager Joe Maddon defended his star after the game, but that was just plain dumb.

– The Ivan Nova era is quickly losing steam. He was great for four innings, but didn’t show much resiliency in that fifth inning (in fact, he has a 18.69 ERA in fifth innings with the Yankees). He should start watching some Andy Pettitte game tape.

– Speaking of Andy, he’s on the journey back to the Yankees after another minor league playoff appearance yesterday. Also of note: He’s on the journey to comfort.

– Give credit where credit’s due: Good Joba showed up last night. And while I’m dishing out accolades, I must hand it to Brian Cashman on the Kerry Wood trade.

– Cash was still wrong about Nick Johnson though. He broke seven bones pouring a glass of milk last night.

– That was an awesome catch, Mr. Granderson. You may earn your keep just yet.

Dan Hanzus writes the Yankees blog River & Sunset and can be reached via e-mail at dhanzus@gmail.com. Follow Dan on Twitter @danhanzus.

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If you’re like me—which means you’re 30 and still play wiffle ball way more than logic should dictate—you don’t trust this Yankees team.

You may feel strange for thinking this way. I know I do. They’re probably going to win between 98 and 101 games. By all standard measurements of the sport, this means they’re, um, pretty awesome.

But there’s something missing, or at least there seems to be. The 2009 squad flashed special traits from the start—the A-Rod homer in Camden Yards, the numerous walk-offs, all those silly celebrations. They gave you the feeling as you entered October that they were different than the other failed experiments of the 2000s.

As it turned out, they were.

Other than Robbie Cano’s ninth-inning game-winning homer against the Rays on July 31, I can’t say this version of the Yankees has had that same flair for the special. Even before this mini-tailspin, I haven’t been able to shake the vision of impending ALDS doom, a la the late-Torre Era. Yes, they’ve won a lot, but the signature wins, the wins that have the championship DNA, have not materialized.

That can change starting tonight. A half game is all that separates the Rays from overtaking the Yankees for the AL East lead, and C.C, Sabathia will face David Price in the first of three crucial games at Tropicana Field.

Let’s face it, beyond losing this series and potentially the division, the Yankees don’t want to set up a potential scenario where they’re playing a deciding playoff game at The Big Orange Juice. It’s the worst stadium in the history of baseball, after all.

To allude to something from earlier, it doesn’t even pass the Wiffle Ball Field test, in which you check a potential playing area to make sure it doesn’t have any overhangs, trees, or other impediments that can alter the game negatively.

The city of St. Petersburg thought it would be a good idea to build catwalks that could be reached by routine pop-ups. I have trouble even typing that without getting angry. I don’t want to lose a pennant because Carlos Pena can hit the ball high.

My point being: Let’s ensure deciding playoff games are played at actual baseball fields, preferably ones located in the Bronx, NY, USA.

His last start against Baltimore not withstanding, you have to feel confident Sabathia will do his job tonight, and at least keep pace with Price. The real test will come from the Yankee offense, which is battered and looking, well, a bit long in the tooth as the regular season winds down.

Derek Jeter’s career-worst season trudges on, Jorge Posada is in denial about his concussion, Nick Swisher admitted his sore knee isn’t getting any better, and Mark Teixeira has fallen into yet another mini-funk.

Someone needs to step up, and it’s going to take more than just Sabathia.

The Yankees have proved they can win games this year. Tonight, we’ll start to learn if they have the guts, too.

Dan Hanzus writes the Yankees blog River & Sunset and can be reached via e-mail at dhanzus@gmail.com. Follow Dan on Twitter @danhanzus.

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Alex Rodriguez locked in on a Brian Matusz offering Monday and unleashed the instantly-recognizable swing that has always seemed too easy and too effortless, to do any real damage.

But we know better by now. Rodriguez cocked his head to follow the flight of the ball then flashed his trademark “Trust me, I’m awesome” glance into his own dugout: always his sign that he knows he got all of it.

If it were the old Stadium, the ball would have landed snugly in the non-bastardized version of Monument Park. In the new house, it hit the back wall of the visitor’s bullpen. A flick of his wrists and the ball traveled 429-feet.

He can still be an amazing player to watch when you catch him at the right time.

Alex Rodriguez is 35 years old now, may or may not have a degenerative hip issue, and has had trouble staying on the field for extended periods this season. Looking at his numbers, it’s fair to assert that the 2010 season represents the beginning of A-Rod’s decline.

This wouldn’t be as premature as some people think. He’s been in the Majors since he was 18, accumulating over 10,000 at-bats in the process. That’s a lot of innings on the field, a lot of road trips, a lot of swings that look so free and easy, but are really violent acts of physics.

The man who only four years ago hit 14 homers in one April now sits at 22 homers as we creep toward mid-September. Keeping his streak alive of 12 straight 30-plus home runs seasons would take a tear I’m not sure is in him.

But then again, we were thinking that around this time last year as well. Then came the two-homer, eight-RBI inning that closed the regular season, setting the table for an outstanding postseason that took his baseball reputation off of life support.

Make no mistake: The Yankees will not win the World Series in 2009 without Rodriguez. Mark Teixeira played that postseason like his family was secretly being held for ransom, and key role players like Nick Swisher, Phil Hughes, and Robinson Cano all struggled.

For all the crap A-Rod has taken from both the A-Rod haters, Yankees fans, and the large faction of A-Rod haters who are Yankees fans, he doesn’t get enough credit for how he carried New York through three rounds of playoffs last season.

The Yankees will make the playoffs again in 2010, with a whole host of new challenges. The roster is different and the opponents could differ as well. But New York will still need a big-time performance from Rodriguez.

The question becomes, does he have it in him? The pessimist in me wants to say no, that A-Rod will struggle in an ugly ALDS knockout, come into camp in February and proclaim he never was healthy in 2010.

“I never really felt comfortable at the plate last year,” he would say, repeatedly pursing his oddly-shaded lips. “But I’ve worked hard with K-Long all winter and I’ve never felt better heading into a season.”

It’s almost too obvious.

But then again, hasn’t A-Rod earned the right for us to purge these negative thoughts associated with him and October baseball? I’m sure he would say yes, but there are probably many people—myself included—who would like to see him do it again before clearing him of past sins forever.

The bigger question may be this: Is A-Rod still a top-tier player at this stage of his career? His season has been an anomaly: He’s on pace for the worst power and slugging numbers of his career but he’ll still finish with well over 100 RBIs.

Call the RBI a flawed stat if you want but it represents physical proof that he’s still a premier run producer. What’s now unclear is if he will be a dynamic player anymore, the type of guy he was last October, where you thought something special was going to happen every time he came to the plate.

The Yankees put all their weight on A-Rod to bring home a World Series in 2009 and he delivered. If they lean on him again in 2010, can he deliver at that same level?

Just 12 months later, it’s not unfair to ask for similar greatness. But the possibility exists that the weight is too much for a body that remains willing, but may no longer be able.

Dan Hanzus writes the Yankees blog River & Sunset and can be reached via e-mail at dhanzus@gmail.com. Follow Dan on Twitter @danhanzus.

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One of the more annoying aspects of 21st century baseball fandom has come by way of the dreaded stat geek.

You probably think I’m going down the route of “The RBI is the only stat that matters”, “VORP is only for loners and dudes who really hate the Discovery Channel”, or some other get-off-my-lawn type rant, but you’d be mistaken.

I’m actually all in on much of the new statistical analysis that has taken baseball by storm in the past decade. Anything that helps you understand the game better has to be considered a good thing.

I just wish stat geeks weren’t so obnoxious about it all.

Having successfully tarnished the image of oldie-but-goodies like batting average, saves and runs batted in, the geeks are now on a crusade to diminish the significance of the win.

Seriously. The win.

You have to admire their gusto, going after the very thing that the idea of sport revolves around. It’s almost as if people have forgotten the wise nice man with really poor clock-management skills who taught us the one indisputable fact that drives the engine of competition…

“YOU PLAY. TO WIN. THE GAME.”

CC Sabathia took the A’s behind the woodshed—whatever the hell a woodshed is—on Thursday, allowing just one hit over eight innings to collect his 19th win of the season. Those 19 victories stand against just five losses, and his ERA sits at a tidy 3.02.

You would think numbers like that—all within the prism of being the unquestioned ace of the best team in baseball—would make Sabathia the hands down favorite in the American League Cy Young race.

But the stat geeks say otherwise, and they may even make fun of your educational background as they do.

The geek is convinced that Mariners right-hander Felix Hernandez has been the AL’s best pitcher in 2010. They say his mediocre 10-10 record is purely the product of playing for a last-place team, and that if Hernandez and Sabathia switched places, it would be King Felix who would be knocking on the door of his first 2o-win season.

That these statements are 100 percent true is beside the point. It’s like me saying, “If I were a world-class tennis player with a bottomless bank account and astounding bone structure, it’d be me and not Andy Roddick watching Brooklyn Decker get out of the shower in the morning.”

Again, this would (probably) be true. And part of me wants to die after crystallizing the limitations of my life simply to prove a point on this stupid blog. But ultimately it’s just an example of how ridiculous it is to disparage what Sabathia has done this season just because he’s better setup for success than King Felix.

Now to get the geeks really fired up, I’m about to take it a step further. I’d like to make the case that in addition to the Cy Young award, Sabathia is the American League’s MVP in 2010.

Don’t scoff. Think about it. Even without Josh Hamilton putting up monster numbers, the Rangers are beating out the weak competition in the AL West. Miguel Cabrera is a bona fide stud, but his team will be lucky to break 80 wins. Robinson Cano has enjoyed a breakout season in the Bronx, but it’s safe to say the Yankees were still a playoff team even if he didn’t make the leap.

Sabathia, meanwhile, is the one constant on a Yankee rotation being held together by spit and the last shreds of Javier Vazquez’s dignity. Without their ace, are the Yankees even a 90-win team this season? Do they win 80?

He’s been the rock, the slump buster, the very definition of what an ace is supposed to be. He is, in so many ways, the most valuable player.

Don’t let the geeks tell you otherwise.

Dan Hanzus writes the Yankees blog River & Sunset and can be reached via e-mail at dhanzus@gmail.com. Follow Dan on Twitter @danhanzus .

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Looking back, it’s astounding to think that the Yankees ever let Andy Pettitte get away.

He’s only been the guts of every championship rotation the franchise has assembled in the past 15 years, after all. Not to besmirch the dead, but Pettitte’s regrettable sabbatical in Houston fell directly on The Boss, who never did fully appreciate what the lefty meant to the Yankees.

And he’s meant a lot. His 240 wins (203 of which came in pinstripes) don’t begin to explain how vital he has been to the franchise.

The conventional wisdom is that Boston Red Sox right-hander Josh Beckett is the best big-game pitcher of his generation, but the case could certainly be made for Pettitte. Look no further than last season, when Pettitte, then 37, won the clinching game in each of the three postseason series the Yankees played.

It was a remarkable and unprecedented feat by a player who was supposed to be in the twilight of his career.

So it should be with great concern that the Yankees wait for the results of Pettitte’s latest bullpen session, scheduled for today in Chicago.

Pettitte hasn’t pitched since July 18, the day he strained his groin during a start against the Tampa Bay Rays. After a couple of setbacks, the Yankees are hoping that today’s bullpen will officially kick start the countdown on his return to game action.

For what it’s worth, manager Joe Girardi seemed a tad nervous when discussing the situation.

“I think we’re all curious to see how he’s going to do,” Girardi said, likely while perusing blueprints of the Wrigley Field manager’s office. “I think there’s anxiety on Andy’s part and on everybody’s part…I think it will be a good indicator. Every time that he’s tried to really push off, he’s felt a little tug. If he’s able to really push off on Friday, that would tell me that he’s healed.”

But what if Pettitte were to feel that tug again? What if Pettitte couldn’t get back for another month? What if (gulp) Pettitte couldn’t come back at all?

A postseason rotation of Sabathia, Hughes, and a lot of bad news, as former Yanks beat man Pete Abe would say.

There are no guarantees in baseball, just like there are no guarantees that the body of an athlete staring down the barrel of 40 will cooperate when it’s counted on most.

This much I can be sure of, however: Without Pettitte, the Yankees aren’t going back to the World Series.

That’s why the 20 or so pitches thrown by Pettitte today in the U.S. Cellular Field bullpen are far more important than anything that happens tonight on the field.

Dan Hanzus writes the Yankees blog River & Sunset and can be reached via e-mail at dhanzus@gmail.com. Follow Dan on Twitter @danhanzus .

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Here’s your River & Sunset question of the day: Is Mark Teixeira having a good season?

Many of his statistics would say absolutely. He ranks top five in the American League in home runs (28), runs scored (94), RBI (91) and walks (73). He’s on pace for 36 homers, 117 RBIs, and a career-high 121 runs, all while playing a Gold Glove-level first base.

Set in a season where the pitcher is slowly wrestling back control of the game, those numbers would suggest Teixeira is having another MVP-caliber campaign. But a closer look at his statistics reveal some abnormalities.

While his run production figures remain at or better than his career standards, his .262 batting average—even after Tuesday’s 4-for-5 performance—represents a 25-point drop off his career mark. Similarly, his .867 OPS (on-base + slugging percentage) is 81 points below his mark of a year ago and 50 points below his career average.

Teixeira’s downtick in batting average can be explained by some especially nasty slumps. He began the season 0-for-16, then after a three-hit day on April 10, went 0-for-16 again. His .136 average in April was horrific even by Teixeira’s notorious standards.

Predictably, Teixeira got hot in May, but periodic disappearances in production continued to haunt him. He finally seemed to put it all together in July, when he batted .344 with eight homers and 26 RBIs. He’s found a more consistent groove in August, batting .277 with seven homers and 17 RBIs.

For man largely believed to be a robot incapable of emotion and designed for optimum performance, it has been an unusually human season.

Alex Rodriguez is on the shelf, and when he returns, it’s hard to expect what he’ll give you. He had been on pace for the strangest 140-RBI season in Major League history, after all. A-Rod’s new-found unpredictability makes Teixeira an even bigger piece of the Yankee puzzle down the stretch.

He’s the glue of the middle of the lineup, so his propensity to slump this season makes for a scary thought with October baseball rapidly approaching. Teixeira’s numbers the past two months suggest the worst is behind him, but his day-to-day performance continues to bear watching as the pennant race heads toward the finish line.

Dan Hanzus writes the href=”/new-york-yankees”>Yankees blog href=”http://www.hollywoodyankees.blogspot.com/”>River & Sunset and can be reached via e-mail at dhanzus@gmail.com. Follow Dan on Twitter @Hanzus _ Twitter” href=”http://twitter.com/danhanzus” target=”_blank”>danhanzus.

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It’s starting to look increasingly clear that—now some three quarters into the season—the Yankees have lost their gamble on Javier Vazquez.

The team wagered this offseason that it had acquired the 2009 version of Vazquez, the ace pitcher in Atlanta who was second in the NL in strikeouts and nearly won a Cy Young award, and not the wounded puppy 2004 version of Vazquez, who staggered to the finish line for the Yankees before surrendering perhaps the most infamous home run in franchise history.

It’d be easy to say the Yankees are witnessing the ’04 Vazquez at work…but that may not be fair to even that much-maligned model.

That version of Vazquez gave up a very notable home run that landed in the upper deck of old Yankee Stadium. The terrace of the former Stadium hung over the right-field grandstand, making it a place where hitters with even mediocre pop—read: Damon, Johnny—could reach with relative ease.

This new version of Vazquez is still giving up home runs in the Yankee Stadium upper deck, but now we’re talking about a new ballpark with a reset upper tank over 430 feet from home plate.

No one had ever went up there before Vazquez started throwing his meatball specials on Saturday afternoon.

They might as well bury Russell Branyan on top of Vazquez one day, because the Mariners slugger now owns the right-hander forever.

Vazquez is in a miserable extended rut for the Yankees, his second such slide of the season. Sunday’s three-plus inning outing represented the shortest start of his season and he’s now winless in his last four starts with a 6.75 ERA. He hasn’t completed seven innings in a start since July 26.

As bad as Vazquez was on Saturday, it could have been worse. The notoriously weak-hitting Mariners were teeing off on a fastball that was barely touching 85 MPH, and Vazquez was fortunate a number of hard hit balls found Yankee defenders.

The right-hander will enter September with the same reputation for being soft that he had when he came to camp in February. But now, the even more disturbing subplot of an apparent erosion of stuff is coming into sharp focus.

This makes for a very tricky situation for a Yankee team without Andy Pettitte and already dealing with the perpetual start-to-start schizophrenia of A.J. Burnett.

Are we witnessing the beginning of a decline for a once-productive pitcher? Or will we see Vazquez take the Pavano route, wilting in New York then succeeding in a market where the lights don’t shine so bright?

Either scenario is feasible. Unfortunately, both options are more likely than Vazquez ever becoming the type of pitcher the Yankees believed he should have been.

Dan Hanzus writes the Yankees blog River & Sunset and can be reached via e-mail at dhanzus@gmail.com. Follow Dan on Twitter @danhanzus .

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Back in the day, there was a pro wrestler who went by the moniker of The Genius. You may remember him.

As you could guess, The Genius’ entire shtick was centered around his (supposed) immense level of intelligence. He wore a academic cap and graduation gown to the ring and mocked the audience with derogatory poems about the area in which their civic arena was located.

Unfortunately for The Genius, he was regularly defeated by other wrestlers, since, you know, the brain has little defense against the running power slam.

I was thinking of The Genius when Joe Girardi decided to show us how smart he was in the ninth inning against the Royals on Thursday. CC Sabathia was on the mound, in a minor jam thanks to a pair of bloop singles sandwiched around two outs.

He was at 110 pitches, or about 10 pitches less than his standard workload this season. Mariano Rivera was not available, having pitched the two previous evenings. He had a three-run lead.

Surely, this was Sabathia’s game to finish. Right? Right!?!?!?

That’s when Girardi emerged from the dugout. He might as well have been wearing a cap and gown, spewing a stanza into his microphone about how the people of Kansas City had no idea how much fat content was in a standard Midwestern barbecue dinner.

He removed Sabathia from the game, the agitation clear in the big left-hander’s face. When new pitcher Dave Robertson promptly served up a two-run double, I thought Sabathia was going to take a steel chair to Girardi’s back.

The second-tier YES announcing team of Ken Singleton and John Flaherty made you long for Michael Kay—which is pretty incredible in and of itself—playing the company man card to the hilt by not even so much as mentioning that removing the team ace without Rivera available might be the wrong decision.

Luckily, Robertson stranded the tying run on third by striking out Jason Kendall. Sabathia’s win was preserved. The papers wouldn’t get their chance to roast Girardi after all.

If you watch the Yankees regularly, you understand that this type of stuff isn’t new. Girardi has always been the type of manager who changes pitchers enough to make you wonder if there’s some type of escalator built into his contract.

The frustration is that sometimes his love of percentages gets in the way of baseball common sense. Regardless of how it turned out, it was a foolish move to take out your best pitcher—one of baseball’s best pitchers, not to mention a known workhorse—to bring in any pitcher not named Rivera there.

Call me old-fashioned, but if your starter takes you 26 outs into a game and you have the lead, he deserves his shot to finish it off.

My ultimate concern is that one of these days Girardi won’t get covered by his players, and one of these, “Look how smart I am” moves will blow up in the team’s face in a big spot.

The Genius, no matter how smart he was, almost always lost. Somebody may want to send Girardi some Wrestlemania DVDs before it’s too late.

Dan Hanzus writes the Yankees blog River & Sunset and can be reached via e-mail at dhanzus@gmail.com. Follow Dan on Twitter @danhanzus.

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Had old George still been around, the incident clearly would have led to a public flogging, and maybe, even an old-fashioned water boarding, military aficionado that “The Boss” was.

Instead, the batting-practice liner Lance Berkman sent off Alex Rodriguez’s shin was nothing more than a cringe-worthy incident and a succinct summary of Berkman’s first week with the Yankees.

“Serves A-Rod right,” you may think to yourself. Taking his eyes off the field to banter with Joe Buck, a noted douche, warrants some kind of penalty. But the timing couldn’t have been worse for Berkman, who just wants to blend into the background these days.

It didn’t help matters that Berkman had another hitless day, getting booed off the field twice. He’s 2-for-22 since joining the Yankees, numbers that make fans long for the salad days of Juan Miranda.

To Berkman’s credit, he’s saying all the right things. He told reporters after Saturday’s win over the Red Sox that he’s “booing himself,” which would actually be kind of funny if true.

He has a fine resume and the sample is still way too small to call him a wash-out in New York just yet.

But I can’t seem to shake the nagging feeling that Berkman will eventually be viewed on the wrong end of the Yankee Thirty-Something Veteran Trade Scale that has David Justice on one side and Pudge Rodriguez on the other.

I still believe Johnny Damon would be an attractive option for the Yankees, and with the Tigers all but out of contention in the AL Central, it’s possible he’d be available via the waiver-and-trade route.

But it’s more likely that Brian Cashman will stay put with the team he’s assembled, and give Berkman every chance to succeed in his current role against right-handed pitchers.

Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter were cracking up as Rodriguez writhed in pain on the Yankee Stadium turf after Saturday’s mishap.

Let’s hope this doesn’t become the most noteworthy aspect of Big Puma’s tenure in pinstripes.

Dan Hanzus writes the Yankees blog River & Sunset and can be reached via e-mail at dhanzus@gmail.com. Follow Dan on Twitter @danhanzus .

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Alex Rodriguez hit a home run yesterday.

You may have heard about it.

He’s now done this 600 times since entering the Major Leagues. Only six other players have hit that many home runs, which makes it a nearly unparalleled individual achievement in a 141-year-old game defined by individual achievement.

This should be a really big deal, but it’s not.

Unless you’ve been in a Hard to Kill -style coma—and if that’s the case, let me be the first to warn you that you’re in a terrible amount of danger—you know this is because of Rodriguez’s admission of taking performance-enhancing drugs.

Last spring, he owned up to using steroids during a three-year period with the Texas Rangers. He gave an unflattering one-on-one interview to Peter Gammons (in which he was glowing red from a recent trip to the Bahamas), then held an awkward press conference at the Yankees’ spring training headquarters in Tampa, in which his teammates attended in “support”, each of them bearing the look of a patient in a proctology exam gone horribly wrong.

(Have you already forgotten the 38-second pause that separated A-Rod saying, “And to my teammates” and “Thank you”? I don’t think Daniel-Day Lewis could have given a better performance.)

In retrospect, admitting anything was the worst thing Rodriguez could have done.

If you’re Andy Pettitte, you come clean and the public forgives you. If you’re David Ortiz, you deny, deny, deny, and an adoring media eventually sweeps it under the rug. If you’re Alex Rodriguez, the admission serves to confirm everything that you were perceived to be from the start. A fraud, a phony, a fake.

Coming clean earned A-Rod no respect from his peers or the media. If anything, it was the ammunition—the atomic bomb, really—that his legion of detractors had always waited for. In a lot of ways—and in almost all the ways that matter to a vain man like Rodriguez—it destroyed him.

So many dinosaur columnists have used today to get on their soapbox to deride A-Rod, to downplay his achievement, to say that it means nothing. The irony is that many of these reporters are the same people who knew all about baseball’s growing steroid problem in the 1990s and 2000s and kept quiet.

They’re bigger frauds than the man they’re chopping down.

Is Rodriguez innocent in all of this? Of course not. He cheated, and if you have a workable BS detector, you probably don’t buy his story that the PED use was limited to three years in Texas.

But whatever your opinions of the man, hitting 600 homers is a huge accomplishment. Does the unfortunate history that accompanies his road to the milestone deserve a place in the conversation? Obviously. But to completely denigrate what he’s done is simply piling one wrong on top of another.

Dan Hanzus writes the Yankees blog River & Sunset and can be reached via e-mail at dhanzus@gmail.com. Follow Dan on Twitter @danhanzus .

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