A big portion of the Yankee Stadium crowd at Sunday's Yankees-Royals game stayed through a two-and-a-half hour rain delay just to see Alex Rodriguez get the chance to hit his 600th home run. They also stayed through a virtual monsoon Friday night, and brutally hot weather all weekend long, just to watch A-Rod. But, but, I thought none of the fans cared about this quest? I thought everybody hated A-Rod? At least that's what all too many people in the media have tried to tell about us over the past week.
ESPN New York's Johnette Howard was one of the many writers who insisted insisted that A-Rod's "countdown to 600 home runs is barely registering in the public's imagination, even here in the Big Apple." Associated Press sportswriter Tim Dahlberg called it "joyless occasion." Those are just two of the many, many articles written in the past week about how nobody cares about 600. Interestingly, for an event the media also professes to have no interest in about, they write about it an awful lot, don't they?
There's a real disconnect between 1) the media telling us fans how we just don't feel anything about A-Rod going for 600, and 2) the fact that nearly 150,000 fans showed up this weekend to see these games. The Friday, Saturday, and Sunday games were some of the top-attended games of the season; the only games this year that drew more people were the Red Sox and Mets series and Opening Day.
Yet even despite all that, we still hear the same old story about how none of us care. The otherwise sensible Scott Miller, CBS Sports columnist, wrote Sunday that "as A-Rod takes aim, one of the remarkable things about it is how little buzz has surrounded his chase at 600. Sunday, it was completely eclipsed by a Hall of Fame class that included umpire Doug Harvey, legendary manager Whitey Herzog, and Dawson."
Oh, really? Then why is Miller's story about the Hall of Fame induction mostly about, um, A-Rod? Some eclipse!
Maybe it's reporters' solipsism; they think because they don't like A-Rod, nobody does. Maybe it's their groupthink mentality. But it's amazing how many of them are fixated on the notion that all Yankee fans hate A-Rod and have no interest in watching him reach 600 homers, even when there's tons of evidence to the contrary, like people sitting through interminable rain delays just to see him hit. Good grief.
What do you think? Tell us about it!
7 comments:
Although I had to look up solipism in the dictionary, you are exactly right - journalism in this country has deteriorated into writing things that other people are writing and doing no actually thinking, reporting, or investigating. Total joke.
A lot of Yankee* fans might be into A-Rod's chase. Similarly, a lot of Yankee fans might be into the idea of being present during a historical moment. I think there is some degree of truth though in the idea that the baseball community as a whole might be a little less enthusiastic.
Unfortunately, I'd say the measuring of "interest" regarding A-Rod's 600th is measured in pretty anecdotal fashion (regardless of the stance).
And what about the heat? After all this heat, the rain was actually welcome. Unless, of course, you had a power outage and trees knocked down. Fans sat through all that heat, too.
I was at The Stadium (original version) when A-Rod hit Number 500 against the Royals, and it wasn't especially hot that day. I wasn't there this weekend, but the heat has been brutal.
Frankly, I don't think 600 homers carries the same catchet as 500 does. 500 homers used to be one of those Hall of Fame benchmarks, until it became clear that some guys cheated to get there. As for 600, face it, if Sammy Sosa got there, when without steroids he would have had less than half of that, how big is it?
Personally, I don't think all those people were there to see A-Rod's 600th. I think a lot of them were there because the Royals stink, so there would be more tickets available and this would be their chance to see the Yankees without blowing even more of the budget on a scalper. Maybe they love A-Rod, but no more so than they love some of the others, and Number 600, if it comes while said fans are there, will just be a bonus.
The key numbers are 500 (already reached 3 years ago) and 763 (we'll see) -- and even then, people will wonder how many are legit. Besides, the only number the Yankees are really about is... 28. As long as Alex is as focused on that as he was on 27 last season, he deserves the cheers.
Thanks, Steven. The reporters all too often seem to think that because they don't like somebody, then nobody else doesn't like somebody.
Uncle Mike ...
I don't know where you were sitting but the day Alex hit his 500th I think temps were near 100 degrees.
We had seats in the upper box in left field...the sun was beating down on us. I finally found seats (only a handful to be had) in the upper deck in right field where it was just a tad cooler in the shade. I think we had a heat wave the whole beginning of August that year with temps in the high 90's to 100's.
Maybe you just misremembered .. :o).
Go Yankees 2010 !!!
Just checked box score for A-Rod's 500th homer. It had the starting time temp at 89 degrees. Just in case anybody was wondering!
Thanks Lisa ...all I know was that I had those upper box seats and it was stifling. We watched his homerun sail by us into the left field seats in the first inning then we scurried to find something cooler even tho' it was higher up.
I just checked the weather conditions and we did have a heat wave the first week in August...temps in the 90's...the midwest had it even worse ...over a 100 every day.
It was hot this weekend but I made sure to get seats for all the games in the shaded area. There was actually a slight breeze at times too. I can't imagine how it was sitting in the sun tho'. After the storm on Sunday (temps dropped drastically during the storm to quite chilly) it did cool down quite a bit which helped. The storm Friday night was downright scary ...you couldn't even see the other side of the stadium through the torrential rains and the lightning was ridiculous. If Alex had hit it out Friday night it would have been like a scene from "The Natural" ..lol.
Anyway ..we survived all sorts of weather for naught...sob sob. Never getting to see Alex hit that homer but at least we got three wins out of it.
Go Yankees 2010 !!!
As you can see with all these comments ..I'm bored at work today..haha
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