ESPN.com drops the bomb on an upcoming SI article by Tom Verducci about some discord in the Yankee clubhouse, specifically between Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi, two guys making a combined $45 million this season.
Rodriguez reacted to public criticisms thusly:
"[Mike] Mussina doesn't get hammered at all," he told SI. "He's making a boatload of money. Giambi's making [$20.4 million], which is fine and dandy, but it seems those guys get a pass. When people write [bad things] about me, I don't know if it's [because] I'm good-looking, I'm biracial, I make the most money, I play on the most popular team ..."Gah. Talk about a breakdown. This is the kind of thing you talk about with your therapist (and from what I understand, A-Rod has one of those) not with a sports journalist. I have no problem with a professional ballplayer seeing a psychologist. We all have problems we need to deal with and there isn't always someone to talk to those things about. But if you're going to see a therapist, make sure they're helping you. Tom Verducci? Not a therapist. This article? Like his therapist, not helping Rodriguez much, either.
UPDATE [9/21 @ 10:55am]: In The Sun today, Tim Marchman throws more Yankee logs on the back-stabbing fire:
Still, none of this [stuff about Rodriguez] is new information. What's new is that the Yankee Way apparently now involves Yankees publicly sharing private conversations held with teammates about their struggles, the manager holding forth on one-on-one closed door meetings, and the captain refusing to back his teammate up by any other means than saying the press should stop asking him about his problems and comparing him to Chuck Knoblauch, of all people.Marchman is one of my favorite local columnists, so go check out the rest of the article.Maybe the most telling quote in a telling article came from Jason Giambi, who told Verducci, "Alex doesn't know who he is. We're going to find out who he is in the next couple of months."The implication was that Rodriguez is a fraud and that unless he comes up with some clutch hits in October, he's going to be confirmed as fraud?a failure as a human being. This implication was backed by more or less everything every other player in the article said, whether or not they were as blunt about it as Giambi.