BY John Harper
All-Star Game snub is shot of reality for Yankees' Alex Rodriguez
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Alex Rodriguez is denied a chance to play in the All-Star Game by his peers and coaches as his season of forgiveness gets a reality check.
There had to be some pushback eventually on this Alex Rodriguez Redemption Tour, otherwise he was on his way to riding shotgun with Santa Claus come Christmas Eve.
On Monday night it came in the form of All-Star rejection.
Nope, for all of the stature A-Rod has regained in baseball this season with his bat and his contrite demeanor, his peers wouldn't let him slip past the velvet rope to mingle with the best of the best, as he once did every summer.
Does that have anything to do with the many bridges A-Rod torched when he was at war with every facet of Major League Baseball — including the Players Association — in 2013 while trying in vain to avoid a PED suspension?
It’s a fair question, though one to which there is no obvious answer.
A-Rod had the numbers to warrant a DH spot on the AL All-Star team, but after the fans voted Nelson Cruz as the starter, the Yankee star was not named among the reserves that are chosen by player vote and manager Ned Yost’s preference.
Prince Fielder earned the back-up DH nod, and it’s tough to argue with his selection, considering that he’s hitting .347 with 13 home runs, 50 RBI and a .943 OPS.
Had Yost somehow finagled Kendrys Morales, his Royals DH, onto the team, then you could have made the case that A-Rod got snubbed. But Fielder certainly was deserving.
In truth, Brett Gardner is the Yankee who had a right to feel he got jobbed. He may still get voted in as one of the five Final Vote candidates, though Royals fans are surely trying to crash the Internet, already voting for Mike Moustakas to get still another K.C. player in the game.
Gardner is clearly having an All-Star season, and in many ways he has become the heart and soul of these Yankees, his hustle and aggressiveness setting a tone at the top of the lineup for a team that has exceeded expectations so far.
If nothing else, he’s surely having a better season than Alex Gordon, the starting left fielder. But Royals fans turned this All-Star Game into a referendum on whether the system needs to be changed as they stuffed ballot boxes, figuratively anyway, so Gordon got the nod.
Mark Teixeira, meanwhile, made the reserve team, and clearly he’s deserving, having as much of a comeback season as A-Rod, just for different reasons.
We all chuckled when Teixeira laid out the details of his gluten-free “no-fun diet”' in spring training as his latest attempt to ward off age and injury, but after two years of wrist problems, the Yankee first baseman is making good on Brian Cashman’s prediction of a big bounce-back season.
As for A-Rod, Yost made the case on the ESPN All-Star selection show that much discussion went into his candidacy, but ultimately the need for position players outweighed whatever desire there was to include him.
“We wanted to try to find a way to get Alex Rodriguez on there,” Yost said. “We couldn’t.”
How hard they tried is anybody’s guess. But at least for entertainment purposes, it’s too bad they couldn’t.
A-Rod in the All-Star Game would have at least added some sizzle to it.
A-Rod would have added some sizzle to an event that remains mostly a spectacle, no matter how determined MLB is to cling to this silly idea that the game should decide home-field advantage in the World Series.
It’s not likely that a pitcher would have thrown A-Rod the “pipe-shot” that Adam Wainwright served up for Derek Jeter last year.
Nor would you think someone might pull a Ryan Dempster and drill him on such a big stage as some sort of statement on behalf of the union members who were included in the suit Rodriguez temporarily brought against the Players Association — at least until he seemed to come to his senses.
But with A-Rod you never know.
On the surface, at least, all seems to have been forgiven this year as A-Rod has made his return from his 2014 suspension. He has long since won over Yankee fans with his rather stunning offensive production, to the point that he was practically given the Jeter treatment, curtain call and all, when he hit a home run for his 3,000th hit.
And while he was never the outcast in the Yankee clubhouse he was sometimes portrayed as, all indications are that he is admired now more than ever by teammates for his work ethic, his superstar status and his singular talk of winning as a team.
He has made peace with MLB headquarters and, most shockingly, the Yankee brass that desperately wanted him gone for good after all the animosity of two years ago. Indeed, Hal Steinbrenner went the extra mile to make a deal to get his 3,000th hit ball back from a fan.
Everybody loves A-Rod? Well, not enough to give him a Jeter-like All-Star sendoff, even with a deserving resume. Perhaps forgiveness only goes so far.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/b...iguez-receives-shot-reality-article-1.2283547
