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.

*

New Yawkey Fan All The Way

Hillary has an opening here to become the one true Yankees fan running for President:

As he moves about the country campaigning for the White House, Rudolph W. Giuliani is not always kind in describing where he comes from. New York City, he will say, is a tough town, hard to govern. It’s liberal to a fault and unruly as a child.

Now, however, there has come what is for many the true unpardonable insult: Mr. Giuliani has declared he will be rooting for the dreaded Boston Red Sox against the Colorado Rockies in the World Series, which began last night. From the Bronx to his childhood haunts in Brooklyn, there was a baffled anger bordering on rage.

“They should burn his seat that he sat in at Yankee Stadium — how’s that?” said George Patsin, a Brooklyn restaurateur. “They should burn it on TV so I can watch.”

. . .

By way of explanation, Mr. Giuliani couched his shift in loyalty as support for the American League. (“I’m an American League fan and I go with the American League team,” he told reporters — not coincidentally — in the primary state and Boston neighbor of New Hampshire.) “I thought he was loyal to New York,” said Kebrae H. Scott, 30, a maintenance worker who wore a Yankees cap as he was heading to his home in the Ebbets Fields Apartments in Brooklyn near where Mr. Giuliani grew up.

. . .

Of course, his most revealing comment on the subject was perhaps the answer he provided to The Providence Journal in Rhode Island when asked, this June, if he would agree to be president if it hinged on his becoming a Red Sox fan.

“I have great respect for people who really are fans of the team they say they are fans of,” Mr. Giuliani said. “But probably that’s a deal I could not make.”

Take This Ball, Bat, Glove, Mitt — I Ain’t Workin’ Here No More

Joe Torre gives the Boss the full Johnny Paycheck, gets to live out the double-barreled middle finger fantasy most of us can only dream about:

It was the longest-running and most successful show in the Bronx in decades, running from 1996 through 2007 and stretching into October every season. By the end, it was playing to sold-out crowds almost nightly, and there were moments of magic that may never be repeated.

But the curtain fell on the Joe Torre Era yesterday when Torre, who will someday enter the Hall of Fame for his work as the Yankees’ manager, rejected the team’s one-year contract offer to stay. The Yankees said they would begin a search for a new manager.

Torre flew to Tampa, Fla., yesterday to meet with the team’s principal owner, George Steinbrenner, after two days of organizational meetings had ended with no announcement. The Yankees offered Torre $5 million, but he could have earned an additional $3 million — and a guaranteed $8 million salary in 2009 — if he had led the Yankees to the World Series next season.

The salary would have kept Torre as the highest-paid manager in the majors, but the guaranteed portion would have represented a cut from his present salary, which averaged $6.4 million over the last three seasons. In each year of that contract, the Yankees lost in the first round of the playoffs.

. . .

[Third base coach Larry] Bowa said he was surprised that Torre would fly to Tampa if he knew he was going to reject the Yankees’ offer, echoing a widely held sentiment.

Shea-denfreude!

If you’re enjoying watching hapless Mets fans suffer following the team’s unprecedented collapse, rest assured that there is a busy third day of coverage. First, the Times’ Murray Chass on what could have been:

This was supposed to be the game the Mets played, this afternoon’s game between Colorado and Philadelphia that begins this year’s postseason. But the Mets won’t be playing at Shea Stadium today. They have all scattered to their homes in various countries to dwell on their stunning collective failure and ponder their new place in baseball infamy.

Then there’s manager Willie Randolph’s cries for help:

In the roughly 40 hours that had elapsed since he left Shea Stadium on Sunday evening and returned yesterday morning, Willie Randolph had symbolically distanced himself from the Mets’ collapse. Randolph shaved his mustache, and his explanation — “Not a good time to be recognized in this town,” he said with a knowing smile — probably contained a kernel of truth.

His droll acknowledgment of the team’s failure to make the playoffs — a flop, he learned yesterday, that would not cost him his job as the team’s manager — offered a rare glimpse into a man whose public persona remained defiantly low-key and positive, even as the season was unraveling.

But yesterday Randolph opened up in a way that he seldom did during the season, conceding that the team may have been overconfident and acknowledging that his frustration has kept him awake at night.

“I’ve always been associated with winning, and it hurts deep down inside, really hurts, to be associated with this type of collapse,” Randolph said. “That’s not how we play the game, and there’s no way in the world that I thought we would be in this position right now talking about this; I thought we’d be preparing for the postseason. But it’s a cruel lesson in life and baseball. Make your bed and you live in it. We definitely set us up for this disappointment.”

. . .

“When the finality comes down, and you know that you didn’t reach your goal and you didn’t achieve what you wanted to achieve, it really tears you apart inside,” Randolph said. “Like I said, I’ve been there before, but this is probably the most pain I’ve felt since I’ve been in baseball.”

Not so bad, though, that he considered doing anything drastic. Asked again why he decided to shave his mustache, which will live on in the television footage and photographs chronicling the collapse, Randolph said, “I tried to cut my throat, but I aimed too high.”

And on top of all that, it’s revealed that reliever Scott Schoeneweis may be linked to Major League Baseball’s steroid scandal:

As Major League Baseball moves into the postseason, published reports linking players to performance-enhancing drugs continue to appear, creating a continued distraction for the sport and raising questions about whether the drug-testing program introduced in recent seasons is being outmaneuvered.

The latest report came Monday, when ESPN.com reported that Mets relief pitcher Scott Schoeneweis received six shipments of steroids in 2003 and 2004, when he played for the Chicago White Sox.

. . .

At Shea Stadium yesterday, Mets General Manager Omar Minaya said that the team had no knowledge of anything linking Schoeneweis to performance-enhancing substances when they signed him.

A-Rod’s Guilty Pleasures

There’s something unnervingly unmanly about the idea that Alex Rodriguez gets pumped up by listening to Pat Benatar:

Alex Rodriguez’s choice of music in spring training was perfectly fitting for his personality. As he prepared for the season, he played the Pat Benatar song “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” over and over, at high volume, in his earphones. The message was purposeful, motivational . . . and just a little forced.

Knock me down, it’s all in vain, I’ll get right back on my feet again!