Yankees Fans Have A T-Shirt In Mind For A-Rod*

A-Rod has always been the type of player who really comes through when it counts:

Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who had one of the best statistical seasons in the storied history of the Yankees, opted out of the final three years on his 10-year, $252 million contract Sunday, according to his agent. The move makes him a free agent and potentially ends his career with the team.

“We have put it in writing and sent it to the Yankees,” Rodriguez’s agent, Scott Boras, said in a telephone interview.

The Yankees had said they would not negotiate with Rodriguez if he opted out, so he might have played his final game with them. There is a chance that the Yankees could change their minds and negotiate with Boras toward a contract, but Rodriguez will be a free agent and will be able to negotiate with all 30 teams.

On the night their archrival, the Boston Red Sox, won the World Series for the second time in four seasons, the Yankees may have lost the player widely considered the best in the game. Rodriguez led the major leagues this season with 54 home runs, including the 500th of his career, and 156 runs batted in. He is expected to win his third Most Valuable Player award.

*

And By 2030 We’ll Also Become More Economical With Our “Ns”

PlaNYC isn’t all about congestion pricing and the as-yet-unexplained 1 million new residents. There is also the part about the mussels:

The mayor wants to plant 20 cubic meters of ribbed mussel beds into Hendrix Creek next to the 26th Ward Wastewater Treatment Plant to naturally clean and filter nearby Jamaica Bay. “In the 19th Century, the natural way the harbor got cleaned was because it was full of mussels and clams,” said Rohit Aggarwala, the director of long-term planning and sustainability, the department the mayor created to oversee PlaNYC2030. “If it works there, we’ll try it in lots of different places.” Others are skeptical though. “I don’t how you’d ever find enough ribbed mussels to make much of a difference.,” said Ray Grizzle, a professor of Marine Sciences at the University of New Hampshire. Still, the city is set to give it a try next spring.

But Without Residency Requirements What Would Become Of Staten Island?

When you get to park for free, it makes it easy to commute:

The city’s largest public employees union, District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, is pressing the City Council to join Mayor Bloomberg in ending a residency rule that requires 45,000 of the union’s members to live in New York City.

But the proposal is facing fierce opposition from the usually labor-friendly City Council. Some council members say city jobs should be reserved for city residents.

Union leaders have argued it is unfair to force employees to stretch their salaries to pay for costly housing in the city when there are more affordable options available in the outlying areas. They propose that their members be allowed to leave the city and reside in the counties of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, and Putnam and aren’t taking the council’s resistance lightly.

“New” Or “Like New” Or Perhaps Just “Reconditioned”

Oh, and by the way, about all that new parkland:

The Bloomberg administration has always claimed more parkland will be created by the new Yankee Stadium project, which swallowed the 102-year-old Macombs Dam Park.

In recent months, the city has upped the numbers, saying 27.6 acres of replacement parkland will be built here, a clear gain of several acres for the community.

Yet 45 percent of these new parks — or 12.5 acres — already exist, either as mapped parkland or, in one case, as a schoolyard. Two of the replacement fields will be more than a mile away.

The replacement plan’s reliance on existing park parcels was acknowledged by Parks Dept. spokesman Warner Johnston, but “just because property is mapped as parkland, or Parks property, does not mean that it is fully developed into a dedicated park,” he said.

“They’re passing off park land the public’s been using for at least 70 years,” said Geoffrey Croft of NYC Park Advocates.

. . .

Johnston explained the city’s plan will “transform” similar park property surrounding Yankee Stadium. “The replacement parks will reconstruct the parkland with new amenities and landscaping,” he said. A new artificial turf field at the West Bronx Recreation Center, for example, will go down on what was an “empty lot.”

That lot is 1.2 miles uphill from the former Macombs Dam Park. A mile southeast of the old park, another acre of artificial turf is being installed on the asphalt playground of P.S. 29, built 45 years ago.

“They’re putting in artificial turf — that’s not replacing anything,” Croft said.

Earlier: That Was Fast.

From The Dept. Of “You Could Do That, But . . .”

Yes, there are times when it just might be better to get out and walk:

Riding the New York City Marathon on the city’s mass-transit system was almost as grueling as running it.

It took seven buses and three subway trains to trek through five boroughs along roughly the same 26.2-mile route some 40,000 runners will follow this Sunday.

My race began on the S53 bus in Staten Island, and like the start of the actual marathon, there was little space to breathe.

I had to duck errant elbows and fists, and thanks to one of my fellow riders, I was overcome by the odor of a thousand people sweating.

. . .

If I made every single connection, I could complete the marathon in three hours, 45 minutes — a respectable finish an hour quicker than my running time last year.

. . .

I crossed the finish line in Central Park in four hours, 57 minutes — two minutes slower than I ran the race in 2006.

Of that time, I spent three hours, 15 minutes riding buses and subways and another one hour, 42 minutes waiting for them.

Along the route that took me on seven buses and three subways, I swiped my MetroCard 10 times.