Rodriguez’s Postseason Perception Is Flawed

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Lately it has been in vogue for sportswriters to “confess” that they don’t root for or against the team they’re covering. Instead, they root for a good story. If Derek Jeter goes 2-for-4 in a game, it’s barely worth mentioning. If he goes 35-for-50 over 10 games, that could be useful. If he comes into the clubhouse, bug-eyed and pale, screaming, “I bat for Satan!” and then slashes at Alex Rodriguez’s jugular with a sharpened Louisville Slugger, that’s a great day.

We’re supposed to be shocked by the real world jadedness of the ink-stained wretches. But it’s not all that surprising to learn that content comes second to flash when a good deal of the political journalism in this country has had more room for discussions of Hillary Clinton’s décolletage than policy analysis. Yet, most of us in the audience are not that different

from those tired beat writers, who bend facts to conform to the same old simplistic narratives that we’ve read many times before.

Among the worn out motifs that constantly recur in sports are those of the morally superior hero and the weak-willed goat. When Dave Winfield went 1-for-22 in the 1981 World Series, he became, in George Steinbrenner’s words, Mr. May. When he delivered a game- and Series-winning hit for the Blue Jays in 1992, there was little talk of how Winfield had been redeemed, completing the classic hero’s journey as described by Joseph Campbell. The savory part of the story is always the player’s fall — especially if he’s a highly paid player.

Of course, both perceptions of the player as hero and failure are oversimplifications that have little relationship to the real world. Getting 15 hits in 30 at bats does not make a player courageous, or even especially clutch. It means that he swung well, that the hits fell in. Joe DiMaggio, noted for his consistent, professional approach, was a career .325 AVG /.398 OBA/.589 SLG hitter. In 10 World Series, he hit only .271/.338/.422. It wasn’t that DiMaggio was a coward or wilted under pressure. Certainly, no contemporary leveled such an accusation against him. It was understood that the postseason is hard. A batter faces the best pitching staffs the season has to offer. The opportunities are fewer, and a few ill-timed failures can skew our perception of the results. DiMaggio played some of his Series in good health, others in bad; in some he was a young man, in others an older player on the verge of retirement. DiMaggio won three MVP awards in his career, 1939, 1941, and 1947. In two of those three seasons, he struggled to hit consistently in the postseason. The Yankees won all three, so no one complained.

Even Babe Ruth and Mr. October himself, Reggie Jackson, had their disappointing postseason series. There was always a reason. There always is. There were also — in every single game — eight other men in the lineup who also succeeded and failed.

Rodriguez has won two MVP awards. Having just turned in one of the 50 greatest offensive seasons of the postwar period, it’s safe to assume that he’s about to win a third. Responding to criticism that he was weak in the clutch during his 2006, .290/.392/.523 “off year,” Rodriguez drove in a career-high 156 runs, hitting .329/.443/.719 with runners on base, and plating 19% of the men on in front of him, a mark that is well above average. But it almost goes without saying that Rodriguez will not have fully lived down 2006 until he has a Kirk Gibson moment — or four — in the Yankees postseason that kicks off tonight.

The perception of Rodriguez as a postseason flop is greatly overstated. In 35 career October games, he’s hit .280/.362/.485, well within what you might call “The DiMaggio Exception,” the acknowledgement that the level of competition rises once the St. Louis Browns and Tampa Bay Devil Rays are taken out of the mix. In 2004, when the Yankees had their historic collapse against the Red Sox in the ALCS (a collapse as bad, in its own way, as the Mets’ this year), Rodriguez batted .421 in the first round, and hit two home runs in the second. He didn’t do anything to save the Yankees from losing the last three games, but that defeat had many fathers, not one.

Yet, that’s not how the story was told, because Rodriguez needed to serve a larger purpose as the fulcrum of a story about success and failure. Jeter — who did far less with the bat in that series (.200/.333/.233) — didn’t fix the prefab narrative, because he had won championship rings before. The public would not have accepted the tale of a Jeter who failed in the clutch, more readily chalking up his outs to bad luck or an uncharacteristic slump. With Rodriguez, they were entirely willing to believe the slump was completely characteristic.

People aren’t as simple as that. Containing the capacity for both great success and great failure, Rodriguez will achieve one or the other this October, and the old stories will be told once more — but in truth, not a thing about the man will have changed.

Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for yesnetwork.com.


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