Sportsfrog.com

It is fair to say, whatever else Alex Rodriguez’s PR problems have been in NY, that much of the resentment toward him started, fairly or not, when he signed that monster free agent deal with Texas back in the day. The notion of $25 million a year to play ball pissed a large segment of the population off. And that resentment followed him to NY, where he has been less than stout in situations where the Yankees have needed him to come up big. Now, at least, in Rodriguez’s favor, is that the game has begun to catch up to that contract, and, while stout, $25 million a year doesn’t look quite so insane in light of deals like Gil Meche getting $55 million dollars over five years to pitch badly in KC.

So, he has that going for him heading into 2007 as he deals with the choker label currently firmly affixed to his every at-bat, right?

Wrong.

Enter Scott Boras, Rodriguez’s agent, with a statement that got a lot of people’s attention. Quoth Beelzebub:

“Obviously, when Alex’s contract was done, the revenues of the game were around $3 billion. Now they are around $6 billion. The elite position player has not been really graded in this new revenue stream we’ve seen.”

Oooohhh. Since Rodriguez can opt out of his contract after this season, Beelzebub appears to be sending an early shot across New York’s bow with regards to potential renegotiation. Either that or Rodriguez heads to market next off-season.

Given how angry Yankees fans are with Rodriguez (all joking aside, he HAS come up rather tiny in some big spots since he got to NY), I can’t imagine this is going to help matters. At all. On top of that, even in this market, flush as it is with cash under the current TV deal, is there any team out there willing to go higher per year for Rodriguez than what he is currently making?

Beelzebub must think so, and I guess it would be foolish to argue with Beelzebub about the insanity of MLB owners. But, if I am Rodriguez, I think long and hard before engaging in another naked money grab. Surely he has “enough” at this point. And, yes, I understand that you can never have “enough” on some level. But if he is ever going to have a chance to be anything other than absoutely hated (even by fans of the team he plays for), at some point he will have to stop being seen as a money-grubbing whore with teeny tiny testicles in big moments and actually look like he wants to play ball just for the fuck of it and come up big where it matters. Maybe play like something matters more than the next Brinks truck full of cash.

And Beelzebub’s latest statement or Rodriguez’s equivocations re: same ain’t helping with that.