Alex Rodriguez, as a player, often made too much of the postseason, leaving his comfort zone and overdoing it. His first playoff as a game analyst was no different.
A-Rod has an innate skill to make things all about him. His larger-than-life star quality may be appealing to some on TV. It also can create epic fails.
During Tuesday’s wild-card game between the Rockies and Cubs on ESPN, A-Rod tried to do too much — even tweeting constantly throughout the game.
Often, he had one of his A-Rod Corp employees taking transcription to try to interact with his followers, while he was doing the game.
This wasn’t the most thought-out idea because, No. 1, he was calling the game, so he probably should have put all his attention into that — especially since he called Ian Desmond “Desmond Howard,” Rockies manager Bud Black, “Buddy Bell,” Albert Almora Jr. by the last name of “Almonte” and apparently forgot about Christian Yelich’s amazing run, as he anointed Javy Baez the NL MVP.
And No. 2 — even though broadcasters do sometimes tweet during telecasts — it comes across as forced and trying too hard.
Twitter went crazy killing A-Rod for his mistakes, and we don’t want to beat a dead centaur here, so let’s cut A-Rod a little slack.
Broadcasters do misspeak. It happens. Though, while four major ones are a lot, if it is not A-Rod, it may not be as big of a thing.
Rodriguez did make some good points during the broadcast, but they were lost a bit because he never stopped talking. It was as if he was back in his “loosey goosey” days in Arlington and had grabbed a whole bunch of “Tic Tacs” that gave him some extra bounce.
He dominated the broadcast to the point you had to wonder at times if his co-analyst, Jessica Mendoza, was still in the booth. No matter who is on a baseball broadcast with him, Rodriguez is always going to be the dominant personality. That’s who he is.
But he is going to have figure out a way to make his past more acceptable in his commentary. While he has often mentioned his career-long mistakes and used pre-planned self deprecation, he needs to make that part of his analysis in real time.
During Monday’s game, A-Rod said, “The rules are the rules” and that Baez hugging Nolan Arenado “was the strangest thing he’s ever seen on a baseball field.”
Where do we start with these comments? Deep breath. Biogenesis, two-time steroid offender, slap play against the Red Sox in 2004, “Ha, I got it” play in 2007 in Toronto ….
Now, some will argue that A-Rod has no credibility because of these things. Personally, I doubt the average fan really thinks too much about that, but rather if A-Rod is entertaining.
So he and ESPN missed a great opportunity. It would have been amazing TV if they had shown the slap play and then A-Rod took the viewer inside his mind at the time in relation to Baez to tell you that in the desperate attempt to win and feeling the pressure, you sometimes do crazy stuff. It was a perfect moment. A-Rod is an expert on rules, even if he didn’t follow many of them. He knows strange plays.
Even out of uniform in October, he maintained a knack for being the center of attention. But this was an 0-for-4 night with two strikeouts for A-Rod.
The good thing for A-Rod is that he now returns to his more structured role as a lead analyst on Fox’s MLB studio coverage. He gets to take some more cuts.
Clicker Classifieds: Michelle Gingas, MSG Red Bulls’ host and reporter, will be a host for Yahoo’s new show called, “The Spin.” Yahoo will try to leverage breaking news with these video segments.
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