PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. -- One thing you can say about the great A-Rod: He knows what he's in for.
He sat in a folding chair atop the Texas Rangers' dugout Wednesday. He pointed at his noggin. To the naked, innocent eye it appeared to have a Rangers' cap atop it. But Alex Rodriguez knows different.
"I've got that 252 tag over my head," he said.
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But my expectations are so big, as far as what I expect of myself, that I don't think any ... fans can put a number over me. I have very big expectations. I hope people don't think that because I signed this contract, I can hit 90 home runs or drive in 200 runs. That's unrealistic. ” |
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— Alex Rodriguez |
That 252 tag is going to follow him around like a Secret Service contingent, only with fewer walkie-talkies. He is more than a baseball player now. He is a price tag.
He's the $252 Million Dollar Man. Whereever he goes. Whatever he does. He lives with his paycheck.
That could be a bad thing. That could be a good thing. It's all in his hands.
He says he's ready. Wish him luck.
On his first day as a Ranger, the great A-Rod was so modest and humble and downright apologetic, you could have sworn he was ready to give back the money.
OK, maybe not that modest and humble and downright apologetic.
"I never dreamed, in my wildest dreams, I'd be making this type of money," he said. "It's almost embarrassing to talk about. I don't think Michael Jordan or Bill Gates or Alexander the Great are worth this kind of money."
And he couldn't be more right. In fact, this just in: Alexander the Great wants to renegotiate.
"But that's what Mr. Hicks (as in Rangers CEO Tom Hicks) decided to pay me," he went on. "Now it's time to win and pay him back."
Winning would certainly work. The Rangers have been around for 29 seasons now. The next postseason series they win will be their first. That's a tag every Texas Ranger has over his head.
So for A-Rod, this will be two tags for the price of one. Lucky him.
But fortunately, he's a bright young man with talent oozing out of his eyebrows. So if anyone is equipped to handle what awaits him, he's it.
"I've been spoiled already," he said, in that soft-spoken way of his. "I've felt overpaid since I was 17 years old."
Pause.
"Of course, I didn't say that before the contract."
We checked with the Rangers' front office, at least the members of it who hadn't passed out. And they confirmed the accuracy of that remark. He never said a word about being overpaid before the contract.
He said plenty about it Wednesday, though.
"I feel like I've really been blessed," he said. "I'm almost embarrassed and ashamed of this contract, because that's my personality. I just want to play baseball."
Now the skeptics might say there's no telling how embarrassed he'll be in 2009, when he can exercise the clause that either gives him a new shot at free agency, a $5 million raise or $1 million more than the highest-paid player in the game (assuming it's not still him). But that's a dose of humility for another day.
At any rate, we know this about Alex Rodriguez: He's one of the most magnetic players of all time.
That's because our definition of magnetic here would be: Anyone who can convince 80 of North America's most prominent media types to converge on sleepy Port Charlotte on the same day.
"Port Charlotte," Rangers ace Rick Helling observed, "is not the kind of place that you guys in the media normally flock to."
No kidding. Port Charlotte is, on the other hand, the kind of place that makes Hutchinson, Kansas, look like Manhattan.
Among the billboards on the outfield wall this spring are plugs for such big national conglomerates as Lary's Transmissions and J & M Heating and Cooling. And it almost seemed tragic to stare at the ad over the scoreboard and realize we'd all missed "Sonny's Real Pit Bar-B-Q ... Grand Opening Summer 2000."
Asked if he could recall the last time he'd seen this much excitement in Port Charlotte, reliever Jeff Zimmerman had to dig deep.
"Well," he replied, "maybe the early-bird special over at Outback Steakhouse. That might rival this."
Even Nolan Ryan's first day as a Ranger, back in 1989, attracted a media swarm only half as large as A-Rod's. So you could understand why, just two questions into A-Rod's dugout-roof press conference, someone asked him if he felt like Elvis.
"Elvis?" he laughed. "Nah. Not really. I'm a terrible singer."
He won't be asked to prove that, thankfully. But he will be asked, by many demanding baseball fans, to prove he's worth those 252 million George Washingtons. So it's a good thing he's one of the greatest players of his generation. But that still won't make it easy.
"He's going to go through a lot this year," said another of the Rangers' new free-agent signees, third baseman Ken Caminiti. "It's going to be real hard for him. I don't feel sorry for him or anything. But everything he does will be magnified. I'm happy for him. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes, though."
We've said before, and we'll say again: This is a player who has earned the right to be the highest-paid player in history. He's a 25-year-old package of charm, good looks and prodigious multiple talents.
But if we had 10 bucks for every fan who has told us, in the last two months, that A-Rod's contract sickened them, we could buy the Rangers. It's made us come to realize the great A-Rod will need all his charm, good looks and prodigious multiple talents.
"People shouldn't blame Alex for the contract," said Rangers GM Doug Melvin. "They can blame him for the talent he has. They can blame him for being as good a guy as he is. But they can't blame him for the contract. That was something we wanted to do and something his agent got us to do."
Yet knowing those "people" the way we do, some of them will blame all of the above. It's just that Alex Rodriguez will be the guy trotting out there to be judged every night -- till the money stops.
But the great A-Rod said he's been bracing for this moment for three years, since he saw free agency looming off in the distance -- possibly even for five years, since he heard some guy named Peter Gammons predict he'd become the highest-paid player ever.
He's been dealing with similar expectations, he said, since the Mariners made him the No. 1 pick in the '93 draft, eight weeks before his 18th birthday, and he felt the burden of "showing people I was worthy of being the No. 1 pick."
So this is nothing new. Or is it?
"He's been in the spotlight since the day he was drafted," Helling said. "He's gotten used to being that guy. ... He's played every day of his big-league career (dealing) with that pressure."
Suppose he just does over the next three seasons what he's done over the last three -- average 42 homers, 122 RBI and 27 steals; start an All Star Game, visit the playoffs at least once. Would that be enough?
Not for some people. Even A-Rod himself understands that.
"I think that's always been the case," he said. "But my expectations are so big, as far as what I expect of myself, that I don't think any ... fans can put a number over me. I have very big expectations. I hope people don't think that because I signed this contract, I can hit 90 home runs or drive in 200 runs. That's unrealistic."
He's the great A-Rod, but he's only one man. And in baseball, one man isn't enough to personally haul any franchise all the way to October. That's just the way it is.
Melvin compares the Rangers' signing of him to the Lakers' signing of Shaq. But that, Melvin said later, is only in the sense that "it doesn't happen very often in sports that a guy 24 or 25, of this caliber, becomes a free agent." Shaq could rap and dunk his team to the title. A-Rod only bats once every three innings.
"In basketball," Melvin said, "you've got five guys on the court. Our game is different. But in any sport, it's still a team game."
And for A-Rod, that could be trouble. He can't pitch 200 innings a year. He can't close out the middle of the Oakland order in the ninth. He can't control the health of the six Rangers starters around him who already have celebrated their 30th birthday.
He can't answer all the questions by himself. He can only answer the questions asked of him.
And by that, we don't mean the kind of questions he answered Wednesday, sitting on that dugout roof.
"I think it would be great," Alex Rodriguez said, "to go out and let baseball do the talking."
And it will. It will. Now the great A-Rod now just needs to convince those 252 million skeptics out there to listen.
Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer for ESPN.com.
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