Finally Someone Said it...

Young Sip is back. Overwhelmed by the large crowds and bright lights of the city I once called home, I needed AFOMG to step up his game, which of course, he did. Anyway, it's great to be back, so here we go.

For years I hated him. He was that cliched superstar who never put up the huge numbers and never looked like he could hit a fastball. He was that guy who just sort of got away with things and people absolutely loved him.

He was the golden boy of New York when I thought it should have been Happy Will, who was busy dominating the New York Private school basketball season.

He was Jumpman, the fist-pumping, model-dating, dude-dating (away from the cameras) pretty boy. He was Deej, DJ, the Captain.

In case you don't get it, I'm talking about Derek Jeter.

Since the day he entered baseball I've hated him. He became the leader of the Yankees through their late-90s run at glory, which for many obvious reasons I despised.

Over the years, however, I realized that my hatred and bashing of young DJ may have been misplaced. As I look back I realize how clutch the guy was. As much as we talk about how big players step up in big games, that's basically all Jeter did. Despite underwhelming numbers during the regular season, Jeter was always the Yankees' guy in October.

As much as I thought his "leadership" was a camera act, all you read now is quotes by players like Roger Clemens calling him the greatest teammate they ever had.

Why the DJ jocking? Let's not go that far. I still hate the fucker and his corny inside/out swing. I believe he is past his prime and will only receive respect based on where he was five years ago and not at all because of his current level of play (for instance, the Gold Glove he inexplicably won last season). He still drinks wine coolers.

I bring up Jeter's accolades only because in a way he deserves them and because it helps me segue to his replacement as the biggest bitch in baseball, his good pal Alex Rodriguez.

Over the last couple of months A-Rod has been absolutely bashed in the media and young Sip has been flashing that movie star smile from California to New York.

Ozzie Guillen called A-Rod a "hypocrite" for choosing not to play for the Dominican team: "Alex was kissing Latino people's asses... He knew he wasn't going to play for the Dominicans. He's not Dominican."

First off, kudos to Ozzie Guillen. Great manager and a hell of an interview.

But Guillen makes a great point. All A-Rod does is kiss ass.

He kisses the media's ass by speaking only in cliches and saying everything that he is supposed to say.

He kisses Major League Baseball's ass by trying to be the "perfect guy," clean cut and always smiling.

He came to the Yankees and kissed George Steinbrenner and Joe Torre's (Mr. Steinbrenner and Mr. Torre, to A-Rod, respectively) asses.

Whether he was genuine or not, no one likes a suck up. A guy who is "too perfect" becomes unrelatable.

But I think all the A-Rod bashing is beginning to make more sense. People have always hated him, but now, over the course of ten years, people in baseball have noticed a trend with Alex Rodriguez that have finally made them tune in.

Simply put, Alex Rodriguez is a loser.

Last week, in one of my many rants abusing Smiling Isiah and the Knicks, I highlighted Stephon Marbury as being the annual winner of the "Stephon Marbury Award" for the player who switches teams every couple of years making his old team better and his new team worse, despite being a "marquee" player.

Steve Francis and Shareef Abdul Rahim belonged in that category.

Yet, A-Rod may be the worst case as the winner of the "Stephon Marbury Award" in baseball.

First off, wherever A-Rod goes, his team sucks and his old team gets better.

In 2000, the A-Rod-led Mariners won 91 games. After losing their superstar pretty boy in the offseason, the Mariners went on to set records in 2001, winning 116 games.

By that point A-Rod hard jumped ship to Texas where the team went on to three straight seasons in the cellar of the AL West.

From there, A-Rod left the Rangers for the for the Yankees, where he was expected to be the final piece in the Yankees' return to glory.

In this time, the Rangers have grown to a near .500 team and appear on the brink of breaking out. Meanwhile, the Yankees have become perennial postseason losers, they blew the biggest lead in playoff history in 2004 to the Red Sox and lost in the division series this year to the Angels.

In each of these series', when his team needed him most, A-Rod was nowhere to be found. He disappeared in games 4-7 in 2004 and then hit .133 with 0 RBI against the Angels in the ALDS. A-Rod also interrupted the Yankees' momentum in the critical stretch of Game 6, 2004, with his infamous bitch slap of Bronson Arroyo, and then again in Game 5, 2005, when he grounded into a double play after Jeter led off the 9th inning with a single.

(Editor's Note: RIP Doug Mientkiewicz.)

The Yankees, once a World Series team basically every year can't find the fall classic any more. Thanks, A-Rod.

So while A-Rod is the clear winner of the "Stephon Marbury Award" in baseball, his case is far worse than Starbury's.

Look at the names Marbury, Francis and Rahim. While all these guys are good players and some-time All-Stars, they are not marquee players.

A-Rod is supposed to be the best player in baseball, or if not the best, he is definitely in that top tier, his name mentioned in the same breath as Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols. And yet his teams never enjoy the kind of success you'd think would be coming to a team with a player at the absolute top of the field. You don't see Shaq switching teams and his team losing. You do see that with Alex Rodriguez.

He talks constantly about winning a world championship, yet if it ever happens he will become the first and last player in the history of baseball to win a World Series as the "best" player in all of baseball, while being the sixth most valuable player on his team...

Jeter, Sheffield, Matsui, Randy Johnson, Rivera.

Jesus, you can even make a case for Aaron Small.

Either way, I love seeing the A-Rod bashing and truth is, the guy deserves it. He's done nothing in his career but put up great but nonetheless meaningless numbers.

Now he is a Yankee, where making the playoffs is a given. So unfortunately for A-Rod, he has far fewer outs than the average ballplayer.

All he can do to lift this stigma is dominate a postseason.

"When you play as miserable as I did in the most important five games of the year, it kind of fuels you going into the [next] year," A-Rod was quoted in the New York Times this morning. "It fuels you tremendously. I do feel my career will not be complete without a championship."

Let's hope it never happens. Few things would make me happier than A-Rod never winning a championship. Long live the Curse.

NEW METS,

SM

On a side note, that red headed kid that I used to bash. Turns out he's a pretty reasonable kid. So to Eric "the red head," my apologies.