Rodriguez played his final game for the Yankees in the Rays’ 6-3 loss Friday night and will be released by a NY team pivoting toward youth. In a very nice gesture by Yankees manager Joe Girardi, A-Rod was sent out to play third base in the top of the ninth.
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Trumbo’s two-run homer in the third inning off Giants starter Matt Cain traveled an estimated 441 feet, landing near the back of the stands in left field. “But like I’ve always said, you don’t have to be defined by your mistakes”.
But on the eve of spring training in 2015, after quietly serving a one-year suspension for his admitted use of performance-enhancing substances, he went with hat in hand to Yankee Stadium.
His official duties as an adviser and instructor will not begin until spring, although Rodriguez said he may visit Tampa to check in on some of the Yankees’ prospects.
“I can’t think of anyone else where this has kind of happened, where you’ve announced on a Sunday that a guy was going to be released on Friday”, Girardi said.
A baseball junkie who regularly watches late West Coast games in his home after Yankees games have ended, Rodriguez warned that he would not be able to watch his former team right away, though.
A-Rod’s career has been mired by his off-field transgressions involving PEDs, which Longoria recognized but said it’s not his place to judge anybody. Although A-Rod was the main attraction, Starlin Castro was the star of the game driving in four of the Yankees’ six runs.
“If this is the last time he plays, I wanted it to be something that would never be forgotten for him”, Girardi said, sobbing with emotion.
Rodriguez has a $20 million salary this year and is owed $20 million more in 2017, the final year of a $275 million, 10-year contract that was the baseball’s largest when he signed it.
“The last time I drive up Broadway and through Harlem and through the neighborhoods that have brought so much comfort to me”, he said. I still remember exactly where I was when I found out the Yankees acquired him. He hit.200 with nine homers and 31 RBIs. Rodriguez then grounded out, struck out and bounced out again on the first pitch in his last at-bat.
He has not said he is retiring.
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“For me, wearing the pinstripes is enough”, he said. “And I was happy about it”.
