Alex Rodriguez 'having the time of (his) life'
DETROIT - Alex Rodriguez walked into the visiting clubhouse Monday at Comerica Park, and suddenly he was seeing the ghosts of his haunted past.
Rodriguez, for the first time in 914 days, returned to the scene of his horrifying 2012 postseason with the New York Yankees.
The Yankees were swept by the Tigers in the 2012 American League Championship Series, accumulating the worst playoff batting average in franchise history. Guess who was made the fall guy? The ALCS began with New York Yankee officials claiming Rodriguez tried to pick up a woman in the stands during Game 1, and it ended with him hitting .120 with no extra-base hits or RBI during the postseason, striking out 12 times in 25 at-bats.
Detroit also is the place where Anthony Bosch, who operated the Biogenesis clinic in South Florida, told Major League Baseball officials that he secretly visited A-Rod during the ALCS.
Three months later, Rodriguez had left hip surgery, missing the first 110 games of the 2013 season.
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One year later, he was suspended from baseball for the entire 2014 season, with documents and testimony from Bosch saying he personally provided and injected Rodriguez with performance-enhancing drugs. It was the most severe drug suspension in history.
Then came the lawsuits. The lies. And all of the ugliness, bitterness and hostilities between the Yankees and Rodriguez.
So pardon Rodriguez for not having warm and fuzzy feelings for this place.
In one the most implausible and bizarre of scenarios, Rodriguez now returns to Detroit not as the Yankees' villain, but their savior.
"I'm having fun, man, I'm having fun,'' Rodriguez told USA TODAY Sports, before going hitless in four at-bats in the Yankees' 2-1 loss to the Tigers.
"I'm telling you, I'm having the time of my life.''
Funny, how life can look so different since Oct. 18, 2012.
Three years ago, Rodriguez was an outcast.
Three months ago, he was a pariah.
Now, the Yankees are calling him a godsend.
"Alex has been playing great," manager Joe Girardi said. "He's doing everything you want. You look at the run production that we've gotten from him, and a lot of our wins are directly as a result of what he has done in certain games."
The Yankees are in the middle of the pedestrian AL East race because of this man. Rodriguez almost singlehandedly let them to their first three-game road sweep in 10 years last weekend against the Tampa Bay Rays. He hit two homers, drove in four, scored six runs and reached base eight times in 14 plate appearances.
Rodriguez leads the Yankees in virtually every offensive category this season. Before Monday's game, he was hitting .316 with four homers, 10 runs, nine walks and an on-base-plus-slugging percentage of 1.157. He opened the season as the Yankees' No. 7 hitter but is embedded in the No. 3 spot.
"It's been impressive," Girardi said. "If he was 25, it would be impressive. When you look at the home runs, the RBI, the average, at any age it's impressive.
"But I think when you start talking about a guy that's 39 1/2 and has had two hip surgeries, and missed a couple years basically, it's not easy."
The Yankees might hate the notion of soon acknowledging him when he hits his 660th home run, tying Hall of Famer Willie Mays on the all-time list, but they absolutely cringe wondering where in the world they'd be without him.
Suddenly, the $61 million the Yankees owe him over the next three years doesn't seem like such a burden after all.
"I wasn't sure what to expect in spring training, I really wasn't," Girardi said. "But Alex is a worker and he knows how to play the game. He's been a very smart player for a long time.
"So if there was anyone that could figure it out quickly, it would be Alex."
Once Rodriguez resisted the temptation to retire, he decided that if he was coming back, he'd do it with absolute vigor.
While baseball was ready to let go of Rodriguez, he wasn't prepared to let go of the game. He constantly worked out, took batting practice until his hands blistered and even spent a week with home run king Barry Bonds, picking his brain in between workouts.
"It's amazing how smart he is," said Rodriguez, who became the third-oldest Yankee since 1914 to hit two homers in a game Friday, including a 471-foot blast. "He just knows so much about hitting."
All it took was a two-hour conversation for Bonds to realize how serious Rodriguez was about returning to baseball. Rodriguez knew he was going to be paid, no matter how he performed, but he had one thing on his mind.
He wasn't coming back to be mired in mediocrity.
"He has such a great work ethic," Yankees right fielder Carlos Beltran said. "So it's not a surprise. Not to me.
"He has so much pride in what he does."
Who knows, maybe the full year off actually helped Rodriguez. There was no need to rush back. No need to play with aches and pains. He was forced to finally re-energize his body.
"Some people had lower expectations, but I expected a lot of things out of Alex this year," first baseman Mark Teixeira said. "You never forget how to play baseball. Physically, you might be hurt, you might lose a little mph on your fastball, you might lose a little bat speed. But you never forget how to play the game.
"The two years off I think has really helped him physically, and I think you're seeing that with the way he's swinging the bat.
"Hey, we need him."
Rodriguez, who has been on his finest behavior and hasn't come close to uttering a word that would create headlines, refuses to gloat over his start. He keeps insisting it's early. He won't talk about his chase of Mays, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron or Bonds.
He simply let's everyone else do the talking.
"I've heard about what he's doing," says Tigers starter David Price, who's scheduled to face him Wednesday. "We're all paying attention. He's swinging well. It's so hard, sitting out that long, and doing what he's doing. It's not luck.
"Really, it's a credit to him."
Soon, Rodriguez will have the entire baseball world paying attention, like it or not. He needs two homers to tie Mays and invoke a confrontation with the Yankees. The Yankees have a clause in his contract requiring them to pay him $6 million a opo for tying Mays (660), Ruth (714) and Aaron (755), and for tying and passing Bonds' 762 mark.
The Yankees say they won't pay it, thinking it's not a legitimate milestone, since they can't market the occasion after his drug suspension. Rodriguez and his attorneys disagree, and it likely will end up in the hands of an arbitrator.
Rodriguez says he's not thinking about it, and he refuses get into a verbal war with the Yankees, or anyone else, tarnishing what is looming as a dramatic comeback season.
"I think he's having a blast," ' says Girardi, who says he'll keep his feelings private about Rodriguez's historic 660th homer. "This is the thing he loves, to be on the field. He loves to compete. He loves the game. He loves sitting around and talking about it."
It's also becoming painfully obvious he loves something else, too.
Yep, proving a whole lot of folks wrong.
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