COLUMN: From Bambino to A-Rod – Red Sox fans still cursing
If you are a Red Sox fan, it may be wise to not read any further than this sentence.
On Saturday, Feb. 14, the New York Yankees acquired Alex Rodriguez from the Texas Rangers for Alfonso Soriano and a minor league player.
By doing this, New York essentially became invincible.
Rodriguez, the reigning AL MVP, was close to being sent to Boston a few months ago, before the shortstop’s huge salary made the deal fall through. The Red Sox were unwilling to pay A-Rod’s entire contract, plus some of Manny Ramirez’s, who would have gone to Texas in the deal.
A-Rod is the best baseball player in the world, bar none. Some will argue that Barry Bonds should hold this title. Let me assure you, Rodriguez would hit 100 homers a year if he were to rob Bonds of his medicine cabinet.
No doubt, the Yankees are paying a hefty fee in taking Rodriguez. In 2001, the Rangers gave the perennial All-Star a record $262 million contract. The Yankees will honor that deal for the remainder of A-Rod’s career. New York also gives up its best young player in Soriano as well. But let’s get real: Alex Rodriguez is a Yankee.
As a long-time Red Sox fan, I have already had to go through a lot from the archenemy. I could handle Mike Mussina joining the already best starting rotation in the game. I cringed but accepted the signing of the former AL MVP Jason Giambi. I barely dodged depression when Gary Sheffield joined the pinstriped crew a couple of months ago. But this? This is going too far.
How can one team, one owner, have the power to sign the three best hitters in baseball? I respect George Steinbrenner for taking full advantage of his riches and trying to make his team as talent-laden as possible.
“I’m pretty excited. This is a big, big one,” Steinbrenner said, referring to the A-Rod deal.
However, I am now even more convinced that Steinbrenner is Satan himself. There is no reason for me to think that any team, let alone my beloved Red Sox, has a chance against the Yankees anymore.
This signing clinches the Yankees dominance for the next five to six years. Yes, they did lose two excellent starters in Andy Pettite and Roger Clemens, but with Mussina, and off-season addition Kevin Brown, that hardly seems to matter. Who needs good pitching when you score seven runs a game?
What is so sad about this whole ordeal is that the Red Sox had the opportunity to sign A-Rod, yet they didn’t do everything they could to close the deal. A-Rod wanted out of Texas badly, and Texas owner Tom Hicks desperately wanted A-Rod’s many millions instead of his lone superstar. Boston’s time came and passed, and then New York quietly stepped in and made the biggest and most depressing trade in the history of baseball.
As Robert Plant once wrote, “Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams, telling myself it’s not as hard, hard, hard as it seems.”
With the same curious but empty feeling I get when I calculate what I have to get on a final to pull a B in a class, I researched a trade that happened many years ago. In this trade, Boston was also willing to part with a player instead of giving away large sums of money.
Strangely enough, the key player in this deal could have been a long-time Red Sox player, but instead ended up in pinstripes, and became the greatest player to ever play the game. Strangely enough, since that trade 85 years ago, Boston has never won a World Series Championship.
Strangely enough, the player in that trade also wore the number 3, just like the newest member of the Yankees.
Can you say “The curse of A-Rod?”
Brad Barth is a freshman majoring in English. He can be contacted at bcb@cc.usu.edu.