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A-Rod's finally realized saying less is more

Johnette Howard

June 27, 2008

The way Alex Rodriguez is smashing out hits is recognizable. It's the rest of what surrounds him that's been startling this season.

That old knock that Rodriguez piles up pretty stats but doesn't make the Yankees win? They fell to 20-25 when they lost May 20 in his first game back from the disabled list and have gone 22-11 since.

Remember that opt-out disaster during last year's World Series and his 11th-hour, come-to-Jesus talk with business tycoon Warren Buffett that convinced Rodriguez to jilt Scott Boras and tell the Yankees he wanted to come back?

Not a word about it anymore.

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There was a time when A-Rod was nearly everyone's whipping boy here in New York. But now look: It's nearly the halfway point of the season, this year's final Subway Series showdown against the Mets begins today with a split-stadium, day-night doubleheader to kick off the four-game set, and Rodriguez has spent most of this season in a sort of exalted state. He's been a one-man No Controversy Zone.

Who ever thought this could happen? Rodriguez hasn't been spanked by Hank Steinbrenner once. He hasn't been caught sunbathing shirtless in Central Park or walking into a hotel with some peroxide blonde gal pal who's not his wife. All the familiar psychodramas - how Alex needs to be loved, how Alex needs to be understood, how Alex is so plastic he has scant friends in his own clubhouse? Gone.

Even that early-season story about Jose Canseco charging that he introduced A-Rod to a personal trainer who allegedly advocated steroid use died a quick death, partly because Rodriguez has done another thing this season that few people thought possible for him.

He's finally mastered the words "no comment."

It's surprising any way you look at it.

As strange as it is to say about a perennial All-Star who bats cleanup for the Yankees, has the highest salary in baseball and is in contention for the second batting title of his career, it feels as if Rodriguez is having - for him, anyway - an under-the-radar season.

If anything - here's an upset - we're not talking enough about him, for a change.

"He's just playing great baseball, running the bases, stealing bases, hitting; he's doing everything you would want from a player," manager Joe Girardi said.

Rodriguez's looming presence in the middle of the Yankees' order has lifted the team since he came back May 20. He had a home run that night, then homered again in four straight games during the Yankees' recent seven-game winning streak.

Jorge Posada thinks it's no coincidence that the entire offense has started to hum since A-Rod's return. Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui are among the league leaders in batting average, along with Rodriguez. Jason Giambi, who looked washed up eight weeks ago, is among the league leaders in home runs. And Rodriguez is finally, truly behaving like the guy who declared in spring training of 2007 that he wasn't going to try to please all of the people all of the time anymore.

It took Rodriguez some time to get it down, to genuinely brush off things and do a little self-editing when he doesn't. But think about it: When's the last time you shook your head about something recent that A-Rod said, or some off-field mess he got himself into?

Derek Jeter has always acted as if he were born with an internal squelch button. But Rodriguez had to get banged around his first few years here before he learned what Jeter seems to intuitively understand about stardom in this town. Saying less is more. Letting your play talk is even better. Listening to what's being said about you day to day? Forget it.

The Yankees don't have to wonder where they would be this season had Rodriguez not come back. They found out when he was hurt. They looked and played like a last-place club with an inconsistent offense. Without A-Rod, they'd have less hope of going into today's doubleheader against the Mets thinking they have a shot to outscore them even if they don't outpitch them with minor-league call-up Dan Giese and Texas castoff Sidney Ponson. Having Rodriguez back as the axis of the offense changes everything.

He's long been the best player in baseball. But if he keeps going the way he has been this season, he might yet nail down one of the few labels he lacks:

Winner.