Arod goes Rockne

According to reports, the Yankees weekend drubbing of the mighty University of South Florida Bulls came on the cough syrup breath of Alex Rodriguez, whose fiery speech in the locker room - a heart-thumping avalanche of passion that left his teammates hitting through tears - conquered all the demons that once whispered into Yankee earwax, "You're not good enough, and your dad is ashamed of you."

“What Alex did, it blew me away,” Eric Chavez told the New York Daily News. “To get up in front of the whole team, out of your element, he really embraced it. I don’t see myself doing that. I can’t knock down those walls, so to see Al do it, it was like, ‘Wow.’”

Music to my ears. In this cynical world, you don't often hear a player say, "It was like, 'Wow.'"

I'll take it. I've said this before: In all the time Alex has been a Yankee, I've never seen him jog out a grounder. He plays hard. Now, he's yelling hard, too.

There's been a general assumption throughout the Gammoniverse that Arod is going to become a giant weight upon the Yankees, that his contract will pull us all underwater someday. But I dunno. This guy is different from the rest. This guy is smarter than the rest. Have you seen what Curt Schilling has done since leaving the Redsocks? I think that's what Alex is likely to do after leaving baseball. I think when he cannot hit, he's going to get out - regardless of what's left on his contract.