Shocker! A-Rod is star of this year's Yankee promotional schedule

I guess Alex Rodriguez is marketable after all. The Yankees announced their 2016 promotional schedule on Thursday. And he's the star of it! What a difference a year -- with 30+ homers for Alex -- makes. Bat Day is arguably the Yankees' most popular event. And this year, the Yanks are giving away an "Alex Rodriguez Replica Bat" on May 14 to 10,000 kids 14 and under.

But what about the children, as the cliche goes? Squawker Jon pointed out that the fact that this giveaway involves kids is even more amazing. It really is a shocking turn of events!

I take a look at that Facebook "On This Day" app each day, which shows me what I was posting on previous years on this date. And last year at this time, I was Squawking -- and writing on Facebook -- about how angry the Yankees were at A-Rod, and how they were doing their best to alienate him. Remember how they got mad about him showing up for spring training *early*? It never made any sense to me then or now. They needed to get the best out of him in order to win, so wouldn't they want to make him more comfortable, not less?

At any rate, A-Rod's great year -- or at least great four months -- is arguably why the Yankees made the postseason at all. And thanks to that great season, Rodriguez is now at 687 homers. His next home run milestone is at 714, so if he stays healthy, it's possible he could get 27 homers this year and earn that next $6 million in this contract.

So given this promotional event, and given the emails Yankee fans have gotten this year featuring A-Rod in order to sell tickets, I guess the team is going to concede that he is, um, marketable? So I guess they've resigned themselves to paying that next $6 million milestone, right? I don't see how they can get out of it this time.

Speaking of which, I was trying to figure out yesterday who got the tax deduction when the Yankees settled with Alex on paying out the previous milestone for reaching 660 homers. The team's press release last July said:

Mr. Rodriguez and the Yankees have agreed that a total of $3.5 million in charitable contributions will be made by the Club, with $1 million going to the following charities that have long enjoyed the support of one or both: the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, the Boys & Girls Club of Tampa, and Pitch In For Baseball; and $2.5 million going to the MLB Urban Youth Foundation.

I could be wrong, but it sounds to me like the team is getting the tax deduction for this. So basically, they got out of paying $2.5 million to A-Rod that they were contractually obligated to do. Plus it looks like they got a $3.5 million tax deduction for this as well. But of course, they invested all that back into improving the team, right? Of course not. They didn't sign a single free agent this winter -- the only team not to do so. Instead, Hal Steinbrenner has more money in his pocket to use for getting fooled in shill auctions again. Oy.

It's funny -- fans get soooo outraged over how much money players make. But they never think about how much owners make. At least the players earned their money by being the best of the world at what they do. What did Prince Hal do to earn his money, other than to be George Steinbrenner's son? Talk about being born on third base and thinking he hit a triple!

Hal's big innovation is to take away the one remaining advantage the Yankees have over other teams -- the ability to spend. Oh, joy.

The New York Daily News did an article the other day -- complete with a puff piece back page cover about "The Art of the Steal" --  about the trades Brian (Fredo) Cashman made this winter. (Shouldn't we wait to see the players in action on the field before we call the trades "steals"?) In it, Cashman told columnist John Harper that the team had "even loftier hopes," Harper writes, with bigger deals they tried to make, but failed at. "If you knew all the different things we tried for, you'd really have a story," Cashman said. Oh, please. This isn't preschool. You don't get credit for the things you tried to do!

Cashman also talked about the team's goals for this season, saying: "If our starting rotation stays healthy we have a chance to be one of the better teams competing for the post-season.'' Quite a change from "World Series or bust," isn't it? Is that slogan going to get fans to buy tickets?

And given that the rotation consists of pitchers like Masahiro Tanaka, who is one pitch away from Tommy John surgery, the aging CC Sabathia, the injury-ridden Michael Pineda, who has yet to have an injury-free year as a Yankee, and Nathan Eovaldi, who entered the year on the disabled list, the odds of the team having an injury-free rotation are about as good as me running the Brooklyn Half Marathon in under two hours. Which is to say, it's not going to happen!

But Cash has a built-in excuse for the team not doing anything this year -- it's the rotation, stupid. Hey, it's not like there were stud pitchers like David Price or Zack Greinke on the free agent market last winter or anything. Oh, wait.

It is going to be interesting to see how many fans show up in the Bronx this year. There are only so many walks down memory lane (the Yanks also announced yesterday that they had special days planned for Mariano Rivera and the 1996 team) that will put fannies in the seats. The product on the field will need to be compelling as well. And that remains to be seen.

Why A-Rod's angry lawyer may actually have a point about the Yankee brass

It's an A-bomb for A-Rod -- and his attorney! Joseph Tacopina, one of Alex Rodriguez's attorneys, started a new war with the Yankees -- or maybe just continued the current war -- when he unleashed some pretty strong accusations against the team, and against Major League Baseball. Here's a link to the New York Times article with the accusations. And here's what I think of each main charge.

Among Tacopina's claims are the following:

Accusation:

"that baseball’s commissioner is determined to brand Rodriguez as the 'poster boy' for doping."

My thoughts: TRUE! This is a no-brainer. Nobody else involved in the Biogenesis scandal got any of the incessant leaks from MLB. Nobody else came even close to the 211-game punishment. And there has never been an explanation as to why Bartolo Colon, who had already tested positive, and who was also named in the Biogenesis scandal, did not get the scrutiny that A-Rod did, even though the fact that he is having arguably his best year at the age of 40 ought to have brought on more investigation. Instead, we're apparently supposed to think Colon only did PEDs that one lone time. Spare me.

Accusation:

 During the 2012 playoffs, Tacopina said, the Yankees hid from Rodriguez that a magnetic resonance imaging test had revealed that he had a torn labrum — essentially a hole in his hip — and continued to play him, even though he was struggling mightily.

“They rolled him out there like an invalid and made him look like he was finished as a ballplayer,” Tacopina said.

My thoughts: MAY BE TRUE! Here's why I cannot dismiss this charge -- my own eyes. I said all along during last year's postseason that I thought A-Rod looked injured. And I couldn't understand why Joe Girardi and Brian Cashman were so publicly adamant that he was not injured, when it clearly seemed like he was. It seemed to me very petty and mean-spirited to not offer him that fig leaf of the possibility that he was hurt, instead of just stinking for no reason. And the Yanks seemed more motivated by destroying what was left of A-Rod's reputation last year than in actually winning in the playoffs.

Accusation:

Rodriguez learned the extent of his injuries in the off-season, and the Yankees sent him to Dr. Bryan T. Kelly, a prominent surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan. Tacopina said Kelly later told Rodriguez that before the operation, Levine told Kelly, “I don’t ever want to see him on the field again.”

“It sent chills down Alex’s spine,” Tacopina said.

My thoughts: MAY BE TRUE! Randy Levine isn't exactly known as a nice guy. He was hired to be a jerk, and he continues to be a jerk. Nothing would surprise me when it comes to him. And why he still has a job is beyond me -- he screwed up bigtime on the StubHub stuff. In fact, I'm surprised he didn't find a way to blame StubHub for A-Rod!

Tacopina said he had copies of “very damaging” e-mails between Levine and Rodriguez. Those e-mails, along with recordings and affidavits gathered by Rodriguez’s advisers, will help Rodriguez in his suspension appeal hearing, Tacopina said.

Levine, however, said his e-mail communication with Rodriguez, over a period of years, would show that he was one of Rodriguez’s biggest supporters, encouraging him to get healthy and to play better.

My thoughts: TRUE. The only way I can see Levine writing the way he claims he did is if he wrote "You little bleep, you better bleeping get healthy and play better, you worthless bleep bleep bleep." I can buy Joe Girardi doing the warm and fuzzy thing. Randy Levine, no bleeping way!

Accusation:

Beyond Bosch, Tacopina accused baseball investigators, some of them former police officers, of serious misconduct. For example, he said, investigators were captured on video flashing what looked like police badges to gain access to a gated community where they wanted to speak with a witness. He said investigators also threatened to turn witnesses’ names over to the news media or call in law enforcement if they did not cooperate.

My thoughts: THIS WOULDN'T SURPRISE ME. MLB has been intent on drumming A-Rod out of baseball, and they made legal threats to Bosch to get him to cooperate. No shenanigans they may have done would surprise me.

Accusation:

Tacopina said he believed that baseball officials were “working in conjunction” with the Yankees to void Rodriguez’s lucrative contract.

“You don’t need to look much further from the top to figure out where this all comes from,” Tacopina said, referring to Selig, the commissioner.

My thoughts: TRUE. And MLB and the Yankees' damage control on this has been laughable. Levine told ESPN that the Yanks were kept "in the dark" about the pending disciplinary action for A-Rod. Puh-lease. Who believes that, especially given that A-Rod just happened to get cleared to play on the day the suspension was going down.

Sorry, folks, but for the past year or so, we have heard leak after leak from Yankeeland about how they want to get out from under A-Rod's contract, and in the last few months, we heard how MLB wants to ban A-Rod for life, and how they've been trying to punish him for years on various shenanigans, but have been unsuccessful. Now we're supposed to believe that this isn't really true, and that they weren't working in cahoots? I'm not buying it. A-Rod may have been a cheating jerk, and MLB and the Yankee brass are not exactly saints here. Maybe they should have thought first, before providing all those damaging leaks, whether true or untrue, to the Bill Maddens of the world.

Accusation:

Tacopina said: “The legacy of George Steinbrenner would be horrified. This is the New York Yankees. This isn’t some thug-culture club.”

FALSE! This would be right up The Boss' alley, especially given what he did with Dave Winfield by hiring Howie Spira. This was the most ridiculous part of Tacopina's claims!

Raul is cool, A-Rod gets pulled, and the Yankees win

What a night! Squawker Jon and I were on the phone in the ninth inning, when we saw that Raul Ibanez had taken Alex Rodriguez's place in the lineup. We barely had time to digest it when we saw that Ibanez hit a homer to tie the game. Then, to make things even more unbelievable, he of course did something that has never been done in a postseason game before -- hitting a home run to win the game in extra innings, after tying the game with a home run in the ninth inning! Unbelievable. What a wonderful win!

I don't really believe in ghosts, or magic, but Ibanez really is great at getting the big hit this year, which is all the more remarkable when they are pinch hits. It's not just that he's the hot hand, but when it comes to extra-innings heroics, he's pretty much the only hot hand on the Yanks these days, with the possible exception of Russell Martin. After all, not a single Yankee got on base between Ibanez's two home runs.

So, contrary to what some may have expected from me, I really didn't have a problem with Girardi pinch-hitting for A-Rod in that spot. After all, I wrote yesterday that I thought Raul Ibanez, when he started, should bat in front of Alex Rodriguez, batting fifth, with A-Rod batting sixth. Was I surprised Girardi pinch-hit for A-Rod, especially after insisting on batting him third? Yes. But it was the right decision.

And I don't agree with Michael Kay and the sportswriters in town that say that pulling Rodriguez there was a worse snub than what Joe Torre did to A-Rod by batting him eighth in the 2006 ALDS. Here's why: Torre did that to A-Rod to scapegoat him and try to run him out of town; it wasn't anything about winning the game. Remember that Torre never explained what he was trying to do at the time, other than to chastise reporters for not noting that he had benched Jason Giambi. And the next spring, Torre said he batted A-Rod eighth to get Melky Cabrera some at-bats, and not a single reporter bothered to note that Melky batted ninth in that game!

So I think the intentions are very different here. Girardi did this because, as he put it in the postgame, he had a gut feeling about Ibanez. And frankly, although Rodriguez may have been humiliated by being taken out, things would have been far, far worse for his reputation in town if he had gotten to stay in the game, only to strike out against Jim Johnson. He knows Girardi wasn't doing it to stick it to him.

To his credit, and contrary to what the naysayers would like to believe, I thought Rodriguez handled what had to be humiliating for him with grace and class, and was truly being a team player. A-Rod doesn't exactly have a good poker face -- you can tell what he's feeling by looking at him (as Squawker Jon sez about moi!)  And Rodriguez looked like the happiest person on the Yankees went Ibanez went deep each time. If he was faking those emotions, he deserves an Oscar.

* * *

I do have a bone to pick with some so-called Yankee "fans" out there. The schadenfreude some of them had about A-Rod last night was disgusting. With these folks, there's no sense of perspective, or joy about the win -- it's all hate, hate, hate about A-Rod.

Sorry, folks, but if you are more excited that A-Rod got embarrassed, than you are that Raul Ibanez won the game for the Yankees, as I saw with many people on Facebook last night, you're not a good Yankee fan. If that's all you get out of that victory, then please, go root for the Red Sox. As much as Carl Pavano got on my last nerve, I still rooted for him to do well. I root for all the Yankees to win. Silly me.

So I couldn't hold my tongue last night on Facebook when I saw Luigi Squeegee, the bat-boy who wrote that tell-all book on the Yankees that the team made sure got very little ink, positively gleeful over A-Rod getting taken out of the game, writing post after post making fun of him, and writing that he would have to sell his A-Rod autographed bat before the memorabilia market for it cratered.

I pointed out to him that by his own admission in his book, Rodriguez tipped him better than anybody else in the league did (not to mention giving him the autographed bat!) and that it was really ungrateful to bash him like that. Mr. Squeegee had no excuse in return for his breathtaking lack of gratitude, other than to claim that Rodriguez only gave him the great tips to outdo what Jeter did, thereby turning a good thing into a character flaw. Mr. Squeegee then complained about that Esquire magazine interview A-Rod did 12 years ago, where Rodriguez bashed Jeter. And people think I hold grudges!

What do you think? Tell us about it!