Well, Alex Rodriguez has officially opted out of his contract, leaving around $75 - $80 million on the table, the Yankees furious, and the Texas Rangers happy as hell to spend that nine million dollars on players who are actually playing. As you probably know, this means it’s time for superagent Scott Boras to work his magic.
That means spreading rumors and creating phantom suitors to get some boneheaded owner to bid against himself and make Alex Rodriguez the highest paid player in the history of professional team sports. That also means a slick, glossy coffee table book detailing in living color how the shortstop/third baseman will help your franchise grow.
As you may remember from this report, George Steinbrenner and his team of “cleaners” obtained a copy of this book. And now, using my unreliable source, I have obtained a few key excerpts from “Alex Rodriguez: How He Will Revolutionize Your Regular Season.”
Foreword: by Hank Aaron, reminding you that when A-Rod breaks the home run record in 2014, the commissioner will actually be happy to be there, and Hammerin’ Hank will actually show up.
Page 32: The first actual sentence in the book, following a pictorial section, statistics, and a comprehensive list of Alex Rodriguez’s awards and trophies, including his Little League MVP award in 1987.
Page 87: Chapter 3, Potential Alex Rodriguez Merchandise Opportunities, includes a mocked-up A-Rod catalog. Items include:
- A-Rod’s Home Hair Highlighting Kit, for the man of medium complexion who wants to look like he has sun-bleached hair like Tom Hanks in Cast Away.
- The A-Rod Public Park Man-Tanning Kit: who needs the beach when you can sprawl out on a taxpayer-owned lawn and get your sun on? Especially in somewhere like, oh, I don’t know… Anaheim, California?
- The A-Rod Workout DVD/Guide to Picking Up Hot Personal Trainers: Now you too can not only get in shape and get ripped, you can get a woman whose body won’t turn to a pile of fat the minute you put that ring on her finger. Aw yeah!
- I’m Okay, You’re Okay, Derek Jeter’s a Dick: Instead of the usual between-innings crapola, psychotherapy believer Alex Rodriguez uses his therapeutic breakthroughs to answer the crowd’s questions about life, love, and impotence in clutch situations.
Page 429: Chapter 10, What Alex Rodriguex Brings To Your Clubhouse. Boras describes how A-Rod’s undeniable star power how will draw attention away from the rest of your players, allowing them all to excel in obscurity. Just do not look directly at him, of course.
Later in the chapter, Boras describes how A-Rod will bring camaraderie to your clubhouse by taking the rest of the team to the strip club, taking the mannish, well-muscled ones to the champagne room, leaving all the “conventional” hotties for the rest of the team, and allowing them to bond… on A-Rod’s Amex Black card, of course.
Page 915: Chapter 16, How an Old, Decrepit A-Rod Will Still Be Worth All The Money. A chapter detailing how people will fill the ballpark long after A-Rod’s abilities have peaked. “People just want to see the legends in the flesh, no matter what,” writes Boras. It’s mostly filled with testimonials from people who paid insane amounts of money to see Michael Jordan in a Washington Wizards uniform, Joe Montana in a Kansas City Chiefs uniform, Wayne Gretzky as a New York Ranger, and Richard Pryor mumbling in a wheelchair.
Sure, none of this may be enough to sway the Yankees, but look for someone with too much money and too little time - like the Detroit Tigers’ Mike Illitch - to find the lure of the greatest regular-season player of all time too good to pass up. After all, Hammerin’ Hank and Bud Selig so want to be at your stadium when he breaks the home run record.
I don’t think the Yankees are that furious. Peeved that they won’t be getting the $20 million from Texas maybe, insulted at the lack of a face to face meeting, maybe, but not furious. And speaking as a lifelong Yankees fan, I can tell you that I’m not furious in the least. Good riddance to bad garbage. I’m a little concerned about who is going to replace him (intrigued by the Miguel Cabrera trade rumors). The one thing I am furious about is the way the media keeps telling me that I’m outraged at the Torre situation and that Mattingly was my choice for his replacement. Torre was an icon and Mattingly was my idol growing up, but any intelligent Yankees fan knows that replacing Joe T with Joe G is the right decision. I’m downright psyched that they finally made the move and Girardi is the Man.
Dan
October 30th, 2007