On Tuesday the major news in Yankeeland wasn’t about the first pinstripe walk-off home run of the season by Ichiro Suzuki against the Texas Rangers, it was all about the lightning rod that is Alex Rodriguez. New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman went into a livid tirade against ARod when the once prominent slugger
Rodriguez tweeted on Tuesday that he was been cleared to play in rehab games. While talking to ESPN’s Andrew Marchand Cashman erupted when asked about ARod:
You know what, when the Yankees want to announce something, [we will]. Alex should just shut the f— up. That’s it. I’m going to call Alex now.”
Cashman had just told the media on Monday that Rodriguez had not been given permission to play in games, “He has not been cleared by our doctors to play in rehab games yet. He’s getting closer. There’s no doubt about it. But we don’t have a date for him to start playing games yet. It could be July 1. It could also be July 5, or maybe June 25.” This was completely contradicted by ARod’s announcement on his Twitter on Tuesday, “Visit from Dr. [Bryan] Kelly over the weekend, who gave me the best news – the green light to play games again!”
For those keeping track at home, it took ARod less than a month to cause major controversy on his Twitter. Rodriguez began his Twitter account on May 31st and to show how much of his star power has declined, he only has 34,000 followers. Despite the Yankees third baseman not playing a single game this year, he still manages to cause issues with the team.
ARod and the Yankees haven’t been a happy family lately after he was embroiled in another performance enhancing drug scandal. Rodriguez is linked to Anthony Bosch, the head of the Biogenesis lab that has been accused of distributing PED’s to Major League Players. Then before that incident, Rodriguez garnered much negative attention for scoring digits with a model in the stands of Game 1 of the 2012 ALCS playoff game.
Cashman can be as angry at ARod as he wants to be, but the explosive slugger is not going anywhere. With ARod’s current injury and the Yankees still owing him over $100 million, he will be in the Bronx until his contract expires in 2017.
