Saturday, August 13, 2016

Theatre and baseball are two of my passions and tonight I got to see the two combined in the Yankees/ Rays game featuring the Alex Rodriguez "farewell". The iconic New York Yankees are no strangers to "drama and theatre" but there has been no figure in baseball who truly exemplified the notion of the tragic hero than Alex Rodriguez. The tragic hero is one who is not all good or all bad, with extraordinary qualities or powers or position who brings about his own downfall by committing an error of judgement or hubris, often a sin of pride. He suffers a downfall for this error of judgement and has a too late recognition of his mistakes. This is Alex Rodriguez. He made very stupid choices, paid the price and now regrets. People, especially Yankee haters, will always say cheater but he wasn't alone by a long shot, but the ultimate admission of his stupidity further illustrates the quality of the tragic hero. Through clean times and cheating times, he always provided many great moments as a player and contributed as a solid teammate. Of course, the Yankees took a risk by giving him that ridiculously long contract but they too, are literally paying for it. A-Rod, of course, will have his shame of being "released" assuaged by the cash from the contract that he will still get, but for this Yankee fan, I'm both grateful for his "dramatic" contributions both on and off the field and his "flawed" character which will now serve as a lesson to all in both sports and other fields of endeavor. Farewell, number 13, you chose the number because you were a Dan Marino fan but ultimately it proved kind of unlucky: kind of tragic or at least ironic.