A-Rod Agonistes

Excellent piece by Tom Verducci in Sports Illustrated on Alex Rodriguez. Excellent piece - perhaps the best bit of baseball writing I've seen this year.

Not sure about you but I was unfamiliar with the term "Agonistes" so I looked it up on Wikipedia:

The word Agonistes, found as an epithet following a person's name, means 'the struggler' or 'the combatant'. It is most often an allusion to John Milton's 1671 verse tragedy "Samson Agonistes," which recounts the end of Samson's life, when he is a blind captive of the Philistines (famous line: "Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves"). The struggle that "Samson Agonistes" centers upon is the effort of Samson to renew his faith in God's support.

Probably the most famous post-Miltonic use of Agonistes is by T.S. Eliot, who titled one of his dramas Sweeney Agonistes, where Sweeney, who appeared in several of Eliot's poems, represents the materialistic and shallow modern man. Another well-known example is Garry Wills' 1969 political book Nixon Agonistes, discussing embattled president Richard Nixon. Today, the word occasionally appears in headlines in a similar fashion, e.g., Rumsfeld Agonistes, George W. Agonistes.

After reading the article - I came away thinking that maybe A-Rod is not a phony. Maybe he is just that transparent and innocent (like a Melvillian Billy Budd - see SI's not the only one who can drop literary gobsmacks). A-Rod is athletic and he knows it, he's perhaps the best baseball player the last 10 years and he knows it. He's been trying hard and is still as pretty as ever - I'm sure why the fans would boo him is a true mystery in his universe.

Jeter is just a big a phony but Jeter has the advantage of understanding how the real world works. Jason Giambi is a living advertisement for better living through chemicals and has had a worse slump this year than A-Rod but the fans give him a break because he acknowledges his foilables and he still scares the opposing team when its peanutbutter-jelly time.

All I know is that after this piece A-Rod is in an even bigger no-win situation than ever before. If the Yankees fail to win the World Series - A-Rod will be the goat no matter how well he does. If the Yankees win and A-Rod has an MVP performance it will be because Torre and Giambi and the boys made him behave more like a Yankee than a primadonna.

Can you imagine a world where Frank Burns was the greatest surgeon at the 4077th M*A*S*H unit and also the most handsome? In that universe people would still dislike Frank Burns and his co-workers would still snipe about him behind (and in front of) his back. Frank Burns would still be clueless to most of the animosity and at a complete loss to explain why people don't like him.

A-Rod is that Frank Burns and is equally clueless. And as a Red Sox fan let me add that A-Rod eats worms.