I want to like Alex Rodriguez. I really do. After enduring so much criticism over the past few years as a Yankee for not coming up big when it matters, he’s had a season that’s all about coming up big. For Chrissake, he’s on pace to hit 56 home runs and 165 RBI (patently Babe Ruthian numbers). He’s about to reach 500 home runs by the age of 31, and barring injury, he will someday break the home run record that Barry Bonds is about to taint–without the smallest suspicion of steroids hanging over him.
But I can’t like him. I mean, I just can’t. Look at this photo. Look at his mouth closely. You could see it more clearly on TV last night, but–he’s wearing lip gloss.
(Mocking song after the jump.)
With apologies to Lil’ Mama:
They say my home runs is cool, my ash bat be poppin’
I’m standing at the plate, and all the dingers keep on droppin’They say my ash bat is poppin’, I think lip gloss is cool
When the writers keep jockey’n, why do I look like a fool?Easton, Louisville, yep cause I’m sluggin’
Balls over the fence, those pitchers eyes be buggin’
Swipe, the corners, first onto third,
But after the game, I gotta look like a turd.Oh, oh oh my lips so luscious
I applicate the stuff with the ump’s home plate brushes
Louisville got me on the top of the heap
Yeah you know the chicks love it when A-Rod goes deepWhat you know ’bout me, what ch’ou, what you know ’bout me?
What you know ’bout me, what ch’ou, what you know?They say my home runs is cool, my ash bat be poppin’
I’m standing at the plate, and all the dingers keep on droppin’What you know ’bout me, what ch’ou, what you know ’bout me?
What you know ’bout me, what ch’ou, what you know?They say my ash bat is poppin’, I think lip gloss is cool
When the writers keep jockey’n, why do I look like a fool?When it’s time to take the field, my lips still rock
A-Rod orange with the purty pink top
Diving, rolling, stopping extra bases,
You know it’s always better when it’s done by pretty faces.The girls really dig that shit, the boys don’t speak,
They rollin’ they eyes; they lip gloss cheap
It ain’t my fault that they all just want to bother,
The guy who hits a million home runs, but his only fan’s his mother.What you know ’bout me, what ch’ou, what you know ’bout me?
What you know ’bout me, what ch’ou, what you know?Etcetera…
Seriously, though. I want my sports heroes to be warriors. I want them to be that rugged motherf@$%er, the guy on the line when it all matters, the general who leads his men out into battle, the first to engage the enemy. A-Rod wants $30 million a year? Fine. Let him opt out. Let him find someone else to feed his Juicy Tube habit.
This entry was posted on Monday, July 23rd, 2007 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Music, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
There are currently 22 responses
I want my sports heroes to be warriors. I want them to be that rugged motherf@$%er, the guy on the line when it all matters, the general who leads his men out into battle, the first to engage the enemy.
That go for the women, too? Oh, that’s right. You probably don’t have any female sports heroes. Gender message received.
I don’t know anything about A-Rod or his lip gloss, but I do know a thing or two about Ethan and his history with hip hop, and I want everyone to know that this is a glorious day. Ethan’s creativity, compulsivity, and barely masked dudeness (“oh no, my hero is wearing lip gloss, that is so scary and gender bendy!”) have been combined to turn him into a bonafide rapper. Just call him MC Anxious Masculinity from now on.
You never cease to amaze me ETW.
Wow, patently unfair, BetaCandy. Billie Jean King, Gertrude Ederle, Suzanne Lenglen, Wilma Rudolph. Check yo’self.
(BTW, credit to my girlfriend Jen for this column idea. If you know me, you know there’s no chance I knew that song existed without outside help.)
You’re 100% certain that it’s lip gloss and not Chap Stick?
Because, believe it or not, even “rugged motherf@$%ers,” myself included, use Chap Stick.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to bust on A-Rod. This isn’t one of them.
Ethan, I was just pointing out how this post promotes gender stereotypes. If you judge men for wearing lip gloss and your only remark about athletic heroes is that you want them to be “that rugged motherf@$%er, the guy on the line”, where could I possibly get the idea you also admire female athletes (who most likely wear lip gloss and are definitely not the “guy” on the line)?
I include the winks because I didn’t think you intended any harm or disrespect; I’m just trying to point out how the post came across to me as a woman, which you can’t be expected to know if no one tells you.
(I’ve certainly been called out for unconsciously engaging in stereotypes myself, and it made me a better writer, so please don’t think I’m just preaching at you.)
I’d gladly replay the season and let you have a rugged MAN’S man like Scott Brosius so the Yankees could be 12-20 games back instead of 7.5
Ok, Matthew, the photo doesn’t do it justice. But it was definitely lip gloss. I use chapstick too, not even necessarily from a tube. This stuff was super-shiny and poorly applied so it went over his lip, like overly anxious lipstick.
And, let’s also be clear for those who don’t follow the Yankees: this is just one in a long line of things that A-Rod does. He’s whiny, self-centered, and never knows when to shut his mouth.
BetaCandy, substitute “person” for “guy” there, and it works just as easily for women. But let’s face it: most of the time we’re talking about a guy. The examples I gave you were 20-80 years old. I do like women’s tennis, but no players in particular. And figure skating, but again the same. I could get into women’s mixed martial arts, though, as per my post two weeks ago. I like Tara LaRosa.
Try going to a strip club with Arod. I’m sure you’d find he’s plenty masculine.
BetaCandy, you may have missed the fact that Ethan said “my sports heroes” If such are all men, why shouldn’t he use a masculine pronoun to refer to them? And do you troll female-oriented sports blogs tsk-tsking them to be gender-neutral and include men? So until the Politburo passes an edict allowing government control of sports heroes, let’s keep that freedom for the masses.
I tend to apply Chap Stick generously – sometimes over the lip! That is likely because I, like other rugged men, don’t carry a compact with a mirror. Once I start, I should be able to apply that sticky, shiny protection with the utmost care.
As for the long list of things that A-Rod does, have you come up with an effective way to correlate those to team performance? I may be old-fashioned, but performance is still the ultimate measure of success to me. I’ll save you from a response by listing the following possibilities:
- distracts the team both on and off the field
- creates an uncomfortable clubhouse environment, further harming team-building and cohesion
- isn’t a “True Yankee”
But maybe A-Rod’s proclivity for distractions keeps the pressure off others. Hey, maybe Rodriguez’s status as the team lightning rod keeps Posada’s head in the game – he might be hitting 20 points lower if he had to deal with more media blitzes. Then again, maybe it’s a negative thing… Cano, he’d hit .350 if he could just be the center of attention – such grandeur would give him more confidence at the plate.
Focusing for more than 3 seconds on intangibles is quite nearly the least worthwhile thing you can do with sports opinion.
As for the charges of sexism here, they’re absolutely ridiculous – it might be rude to dismiss them so quickly, but it’s the response those charges deserve. The majority of sports heroes are men because men’s athletics are far more advanced than women’s. That’s the reality of the situation right now – there’s no need to blame Ethan or anyone else for the lack of maturation of women’s sports.
For a host of reasons, women’s sports got a late start. Consequently, there are more men competing at a high level right now – including far more historical sports heroes – than women. That’s not gender stereotyping, that’s reality. There will be a closer balance in a generation or two when athletics develop further. For now, relax – every real sports fan, man or woman, knows that they’re going to get blown away if Jenny Finch is on the mound or they’re facing a penalty kick from Mia Hamm.
As a post-script, I consider Babe Didrikson-Zaharias one of the top 5 greatest athletes in American history.
Good points, Matthew. It’s really just A-Rod’s attitude. He’s so fragile, yet so arrogant. He purports to be such a great player, but he hasn’t yet shown up when it really matters. And his image is so scripted, so soft…so shiny–which is probably why the lip gloss set me off.
“…he hasn’t yet shown up when it really matters.”
I’m not sure exactly what situations you mean – just asking for clarification.
Playoffs. He has terrible playoff statistics.
BetaCandy, I’d sign up for, among many others, Justine Henin-Hardenne in tennis; Cammy Granato in US hockey (Hayley Wickenheiser in Canadian); and Jackie Joyner-Kersee in track.
And as a long-time opponent of fans spending vast sums of money for tickets to watch men play boys’ games, I’ve been trying not to notice A-Rod since his big contract started with Texas. It pleases me when his teams lose, as it used to when Keith Tkachuk’s hockey teams lost, and for the same reason, but I try not to pay attention.
Actually I’ve always been pleased when any big-money team loses, and the Yankees are the biggest, so their losses would make me the happiest if I followed baseball. I don’t care that the money makes them the most talented team; I’d rather watch young guys with chemistry and pluck give it a rip.
A-Rod’s a great player, though — better than most, just about all of the time.
Go here and look at his playoff statistics:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/r/rodrial01.shtml
In three LCS, he’s hitting .315 with an OPS over 1.000. His LDS stats aren’t spectacular, but an unbelievably insignificant sample size of postseason at bats and appearances allow for aberrations like this. He had two bad playoff series, both of which happened to be the most recent.
For the sake of comparison, I’ve pulled the pages for three Hall of Famers who are considered to be legendary hitters – the first three I could think of when I considered “HoFer” and “hit for average.” Check this out:
1. Stan Musial, a lifetime .331 hitter who hit about .250 in the playoffs.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/m/musiast01.shtml
2. Ted Williams, a lifetime .344 hitter who hit .200 in his only playoff series.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/w/willite01.shtml
3. Tony Gwynn, a lifetime .338 hitter who hit .306 in the playoffs.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/g/gwynnto01.shtml
Like I said, small sample sizes don’t mean much. There are plenty of mediocre players who have better postseason stats than Stan the Man, Teddy Ballgame and Tony. It’s just statistical deviance.
I love the Sox, hate the Yankees and think that A-Rod is a weiner, but I’ll still admit that A-Rod is one of the greatest ballplayers of all time and the best active position player – there’s no question, especially when you consider the evidence.
First of all, hitting .306 in the playoffs is great. So leave Gwynn out.
Teddy Ballgame–you know the story there, right? St. Louis invented the shift that year (‘46), to compensate for the fact that Ted hit all his shots to right field. In fact, they called it the Ted Williams Shift. Now Ted was a good enough hitter to send it the other way (maybe the best hitter since Cobb), but he was an arrogant SoB, and he wanted to get his hits his way. He kept hitting it to right and batted .200.
Now Stan Musial is interesting. All that says to me is you have a perfect comparison to A-Rod. Top-tier HoFer, couldn’t hit when it mattered. A-Rod may shatter Bonds’ record, but if he doesn’t make you feel like he’s going to make it happen when it matters, he’s never going to win the hearts and minds of fans.
And if you start talking about “sample size” and “statistical deviance” when talking about playoff averages, as if the elevated importance of the stage has no impact on the performance of a player, I just don’t know what I can tell you. That’s something I’ll never buy into.
Yeah, but career, A-Rod’s a .315 hitter in the LCS. His trouble comes in the division series (.256), so I’d be willing to bet it’s either (a) he gets tired and beat up at the end of the year so he can’t get cranked up in time for the division series, or (b) he’s so excited about the LCS that he doesn’t concentrate on the division series.
Either way, I’m happy when the Yankees or Red Sox lose.
… or c) it’s a small sample size.
Instead of A-Rod and at bats, let’s think about a guy and dates [apologies to BetaCandy, but I'm going to roll with the stereotype of a man pursuing attractive, intelligent women].
A single man goes to a large party on Friday night and talks to a dozen gorgeous, interesting women – all of whom want nothing to do with him. He goes out Saturday night, too, and finds the same lack of success.
Does this mean he’s unattractive? Boorish? Dull? Too nervous to grab a woman’s attention? Or could it be a function of the circumstances, a situation not unlike baseball where an out is far more likely than a base hit? Lack of success can happen over a stretch [as well as the opposite] – that’s why sample size matters.
Ethan, as I wrote in my post, I chose those three players at random and without knowledge of their playoff success/failures [though I knew Williams' had limited playoff experience].
As for the shift, Lou Boudreau of the Indians is credited with utilizing a mass of defenders to combat Williams’ proclivity for hitting to one side. So, yes, I do know the story – and it’s apocryphal. Did Boudreau and the Indians use a shift? Yes, and other teams followed suit, including the Cards [who, as you may have guessed, from the earlier sentence, didn't invent the shift] – but it most certainly wasn’t the first time that a team noticed that a hitter favored one side and responded accordingly.
You’re comfortable with saying that hitting .306 [Gwynn] in the playoffs is “great.” I agree, that’s a solid number, albeit 20+ points lower than his career average. Gwynn had 108 playoff at bats. A-Rod, after 103 at bats in the playoffs, was hitting .330. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed outs on 5 additional ABs, and he still clocks in at .315.
Had A-Rod’s career ended after those 108 ABs, you’d still rank Gwynn a playoff great and A-Rod a playoff stinker? If Gwynn had a rough stretch in one more playoff series and sunk to .280 over ~130 ABs – about what A-Rod has now – would he be yet another superstar who falters when it matters? And what if he tears up his next playoff series and his postseason stats surge?
Statistics aren’t just numbers – they’re evidence of performance. You should consider buying into evidence.
Weird timing – FJM just wrote a post examining exactly the issue we’re discussing.
I apologize in advance for Ken Tremendous’s language. He’s a bawdy little baseball scholar, but he’s one of the best. Check it out:
http://www.firejoemorgan.com/2007/07/buckle-up-everyone.html
You’re looking at A-Rod’s non-Yankee statistics. Immaterial. As a Yankee in the playoffs, he’s choked. I’ll agree to disagree about sample size. As I said, you come through when it matters, or you don’t. And the playoffs aren’t just more data points.