Wallace Matthews
A-Rod hounded by masks
June 1, 2007, 11:48 PM EDT
BOSTON -- If you think Alex Rodriguez is plastic, you should have seen the girl who met him at Fenway Park on Friday night.
Make that, the 33 "girls" who were on hand to howl and squeal at his every move, from batting practice to his final at-bat in Friday's 9-5 Yankees drubbing of the Red Sox. There they sat, a couple of rows back from the field and just to the right of the visitors' bench, blowing kisses, waving dollar bills, shouting rude remarks and batting their big, blue unblinking eyes at him every time he emerged from or returned to the dugout.
"Oh, A-Rod, we're hee-re!" Jim Phipps cooed from behind one of the Mystery Blonde masks he and his 32 hastily recruited cohorts wore. Phipps swears that Rodri.guez smiled and winked at them. "Hey, we know he likes blondes," Phipps said. The masks were leftover giveaways from a 2001 B-movie titled "Sugar & Spice."
"Hey, we love Alex," Phipps insisted. "We think he's great. I can't believe the way they boo him in New York."
Sure they love him here. In Boston, like everywhere else, everybody loves a clown, especially if the clown plays for the Yankees, and in unofficial voting results, Alex Rodriguez was named AL Clown of the Month for May. Even though it is only 2 days old, Rodriguez is way ahead in the voting for June, too. This is what the once-proud rivalry has evolved into after all these years. It has degenerated from bitter hatred to reluctant pity and now, amused contempt. Even on a night when they win big, the Yankees, and especially their $27-million third baseman, have become a joke.
"They were cheap, just like the girl he was with," Phipps said of the masks he bought two weeks ago at a yard sale, $10 for a box of 100. He used 67 of them as a gag last weekend at a surprise birthday party and was wondering what to do with the rest when a friend called up offering some choice tickets to this game.
"I thought these might be fun to bring along," he said.
Almost as much fun as A-Rod himself has become, a daily source of belly laughs, and the worst thing he could do at the end of this season would be to opt out of his contract. The Yankees need a guy to lighten the mood around here and, ever the team player, Rodriguez has jumped willingly into the role.
It turns out the attempted slapping of the baseball from Bronson Arroyo's glove in the 2004 ALCS was only his warm-up act. This week, A-Rod has broken out his A material and so well has he connected with his audience that now, they are throwing his punch lines back at him, like they did in the heyday of Dice Clay.
There was no shortage of comedy at Fenway on Friday, starting with Brian Cashman trying to characterize the injury to Jason Giambi as yet another body blow to his team only a week after the Yankees were trying once again to void his oppressive contract. Cashman gave way to Joe Torre, who proclaimed it would be impossible for Bernie Williams to play for the Yankees this year given his age (40) and lack of spring training. Naturally, only Roger Clemens can do that.
Of course, there was the pitching of Tim Wakefield, whose continued presence in the Red Sox rotation is clearly being used as a cruel tease, a way of giving the Yankees false hope. Then there was the enduring uproar over Rodriguez's latest routine, in which his shout in the vicinity of Blue Jays third baseman Howie Clark is credited with having caused him to miss a pop fly.
That supposedly violated one of those "unwritten rules" of baseball, the ones everyone in the game seems to hold a lot more dear than the rules that are officially committed to paper. For instance, can you imagine the Blue Jays being this angry had, say, Giambi, a (reportedly) admitted steroid user, beaten them with a suspect home run? Just sayin'.
But nothing was as funny as the sight of nearly three dozen Mystery Blondes rising up to greet A-Rod, like a recurring nightmare following him from town to town.
Now, who would ever want a show like that to close? Long live "The Mask," and hopefully, its many sequels.
