ARod Hits His Dinger

(BOD - Joanna Krupa)

Admittedly, I look like a genius by forgoing the Alex Rodriguez discussion yesterday and weighing in on his inevitable 600th home run and the media reaction today. For those of you who are unaware, ARod hit his 600th versus Shaun Marcum and the Toronto Blue Jays yesterday afternoon. I was even lucky enough to witness the feat live because I wanted to see how it was handled by the fans and broadcasters.

(Quick aside: after yesterday’s column about Brett Favre and his apparent text messages to teammates telling them of his impending retirement, the King of the Waffle has apparently changed his mind already. He says he never sent any text messages and will probably play if healthy. What an idiot.)

The Yankee Stadium crowd obviously went bonkers immediately after Rodriguez hit his dinger. They serenaded him with resounding cheers and demanded a curtain call from their third baseman. And that’s it. The game wasn’t stopped for an in game presentation; no messages were delivered from any current 600 homer men welcoming ARod to the club.

Congratulations, ARod. I will never remember where I was the day you hit 600 (I would love to take credit for that clever line, but if I do, the person who sent it to me will undergo a breakdown because they are emotionally needy and need to be constantly recognized and encouraged).

Even the fans, while they cheered the team on the front of his jersey, seemed detached from the historical significance of the moment. Just imagine if Derek Jeter had hit his 600th home run. The game probably would have been cancelled and Jeets would have been named the Mayor of New York.

And there lies the problem with ARod. He just isn’t likeable. People respect his talents, but he never has nor will he ever be beloved. I believe that’s the main reason why fans, outside of New York, weren’t getting fired up for this historic moment.

I believe there are two reasons why the media seems subdued around this feat. Of course, steroids are the primary reason. The numbers just don’t seem as impressive when you realize most of the great home run talents of the past generation were on enough chemicals to bring down a rhino.

Baseball is a game about numbers and performance-enhancing drugs have cheapened those numbers, so it’s difficult to place these feats into the proper historical context. I’m sure time will eventually look back at this era favourably (every era has a certain stain on it), but, for right now, people aren’t sure how to handle these accomplishments.

Another reason for the lack of interest, that hasn’t gotten much play in the media, is the fatigue principle. The greater the frequency of an event, the less it’s going to make a memorable dent in the media landscape.

There have been only seven men to ever hit 600 homers and four of them have done it in the past decade (Jim Thome seems a lock to be the fifth). What used to be an unbelievable feat seems almost commonplace after the dust of the steroid era has settled.

The same thing has happened to no-hitters this year. They used to be somewhat rare, stars-aligning games and would be celebrated as such. However, no-nos are being thrown so often this year, that I don’t think anyone bat an eyelash when Matt Garza threw his.

Matt Garza threw a no-hitter?

Exactly.