A-Rod's team

In last night's Newsday 5th, John and Suzyn uncharacteristically bemoaned the slow-moving slab of concrete known as Alex Rodriguez. "What was he thinking?" Suzyn lamented, of A-Rod's attempt to reach second on a liner into the left field corner. "He was out by ten feet. What was he thinking?"

Frankly, I know what A-Rod was thinking: He'd hit an obvious double. That's all. Unfortunately, he now has the mobility of Stonehenge. His only extra base hit is the HR. (And he has seven on the year - six shy of 700.) Now batting .217 - with an on base percentage of .264 - he has morphed into a Florida sinkhole, smack dab in the middle of our living rooms. Considering that Carlos Beltran has a mystery bum knee, and that Mark Teixeira shows the break-down rate of a 2002 software CD from Radio Shack, A-Rod ensures a slow, tedious three-DH lineup - (four when Swisher arrives; his op-out date was yesterday) - and embodies the biggest Nothingness in the time and space vacuum known as the 2016 Yankees. And we have have him through 2018.

Imagine him a year older. Imagine him slower...

Believe it or not, I love Alex. Throughout his 2012-14 blood feud with Bud Selig, Randy Levine and their task force of American hypocrisy, I defended him. To the day I die, I'll believe Alex was singled out for persecution as a sop to the Yankees, after Hal Steinbrenner had bent over and accepted the luxury tax/de facto salary cap that his father opposed. In its rabid pursuit of A-Rod, MLB broke every rule, even dispensing a suitcase full of money, while the Yankee brass quietly cheered, hoping to slime out of a contract they themselves foisted upon the player. A-Rod lost two years. Meanwhile, David Ortiz and other PED users like him barely suffered a mosquito bite. A-Rod served as baseball's whipping mule. To this day, some sportswriters vow to never vote him into the Hall of Fame, while carrying Big Papi in on their shoulders.

Yet... here we are, tethered to him like Ahab to the whale. If he gets hurt, we go on a winning streak. If he hits a double to left, he either stops at first, or he's out by ten feet. Nobody will take him in a trade. We are A-Rod's team, and we are all batting .217, and the only question is whether maybe 15 years from now, we are saying the same thing about Bryce Harper.

And this is how I feel after a victory...