This breakfast took place just two days prior to A-Rod first at-bat of the season, a home run off Jeremy Guthrie in Baltimore. It seems like Yankees fans owe the people at this meeting a big thank you for their efforts. I would have to say their methods worked.
“I sat down with two very close friends and they told me a lot of things,” Rodriguez said Tuesday, “things that I had to change. They showed me tough love, and I thought from that breakfast on I’ve stayed with the plan and it’s been a good plan.”
Gui Socarras, a longtime friend, and Jason Zillo, the Yankees’ director of media relations and an official close to A-Rod, arranged the breakfast at the diner on North Dale Mabry. This was in the first week of May, when the Yankees were in town to play the Rays.
In effect, Socarras and Zillo told Rodriguez he needed to stop acting like a horse’s rump.
“I’m glad I had two good friends that were very honest with me,” A-Rod said, “and told me the way it was.”
“It was obvious in spring training I’d hit rock bottom,” Rodriguez said, “and I think you can only hit your head against the wall so many times before you figure out there’s another way to get to the other side of the wall. And for some of us it’s taken a little longer.”
“I knew I couldn’t change a lot of the mistakes I made off the field,” he said, “or my shortcomings on the field, whether it was October or the regular season. I knew I had an opportunity with nine years ahead of me to do things right both on and off the field.”
Rodriguez says that he's "definitely rediscovered the joy of playing baseball again,” and has "grown a lot" as a player and a person. He also feels "liberated" since he became more of a team-first guy, and explains how his relationships with his teammates have changed for the better. “I’ve had more dinners, I’ve had more get-togethers, more parties with my teammates,” A-Rod said, “than I have in my combined six years here.”
The proof is in the pudding. We've seen all year how different A-Rod is, not only on the field but off the field as well. He handles the media better, recovered from his chronic foot-in-mouth syndrome, and hasn't spent too much time on Page Six--at least not for hanging out with muscular strippers. His performance this October is just more proof that he's in a much better place mentally than he has been during his Yankee career, maybe longer.
Coming into this season I was worried that the Yankees would be "stuck" with A-Rod for the next 9 seasons. The hip surgery, the steroid stuff, and his overall rocky first five seasons in the Bronx can do that to ya. But right now I'm not too worried about that anymore.