0 comments What A-Rod Has Wrong Today: He Participates in Unfunny Skits for ESPN

Lately A-Rod has made some serious missteps that the New York sports media has had a chance to jump all over. A-Rod hasn't helped the Yankees' ratings and then he failed to make the All-Star team. Those were two egregious errors that A-Rod made. Now Mike Lupica has made the vital discovery that A-Rod has in fact made another error in judgment. He participated in an unfunny skit at the ESPY's this year where he pretended to apologize for a variety of things. At this point, the New York media can't rip on A-Rod for his performance on the field, so they are having to reach in order to criticize him. Lupica says A-Rod "strikes out looking" (get it?) in taking part in the unfunny skit and takes joy in finally getting the chance to write about what an asshole A-Rod is. It's a glorious day for Mike Lupica. He's probably sitting on the edge of his seat talking over someone right now, gleefully happy that he finally can pile on A-Rod again.

Alex Rodriguez has made hardly any mistakes since he returned to the Yankees after serving a full-season suspension for Tony Bosch and for being up to his eyeballs in baseball’s case against Bosch’s Biogenesis clinic.

Ah, but now he has made a mistake that isn't really a mistake and Mike Lupica is all over it. He's on the edge of his seat, trying to seem as tall as possible and talking over anyone who dares to try to be in the same room as him. 

Mostly Rodriguez has hit, and reminded everybody that if you can still produce in sports, fans will find so much forgiveness in their hearts they’re afraid sometimes those hearts might burst like frozen pipes.

Yes, fans are so good at finding forgiveness when a player hits well. Being that Mike Lupica is unable to focus on anything that doesn't involve him, I wonder if he knows that A-Rod has gotten more favorable coverage from sportswriters as the 2015 season progresses. Why? Because A-Rod is producing. But yeah, fans are the fickle ones. 

He has said all the right things and attended charity events, and gotten himself straight, at least for the time being, 

But the fuck up is coming. Mike Lupica knows it. If it doesn't come, then Mike Lupica will blow a small thing out of proportion to make it seem like A-Rod has not gotten himself straight.

and barring any future problems with baseball drugs, with the commissioner and with Yankee ownership. He has, by all accounts, been a bedrock of good behavior in the Yankee clubhouse, especially with young players.

I don't know how many times Mike Lupica can write "A-Rod has been on his best behavior...so far" in this column without it seeming more and more repetitive. Yeah, he hasn't screwed up. Get to your point. 

the way he is covered these days, you can probably forgive him for wondering how Caitlyn Jenner beat him out for the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the ESPY Awards — why he thought it was a good idea to stand in the spotlight at the ESPYs on Wednesday night and participate in a painfully lame and hideously unfunny apology skit with Joel McHale and Ken Jeong from “The Hangover” movies.

A-Rod screwed up because he participated in an unfunny skit at an awards show. This is where we are at now in trying to find things that A-Rod has done wrong. He was a part of a skit that wasn't funny, which apparently is the only reason needed for Mike Lupica to bring up the fact A-Rod used PED's again and criticize A-Rod for lacking funny. A-Rod didn't write the skit and he's not a comedian. He simply took part in the unfunny skit. 

Because even Rodriguez has to know that what he was accused of doing with Bosch and convicted of doing by arbitrator Fredric Horowitz isn’t funny, with or without penis gags. And isn’t ever going to be funny.

PED's are a life and death situation to Mike Lupica. This shit is very serious. If a player uses PED's to gain an advantage, then he should not make jokes about it. Sure, he could casually mention he used amphetamines in an interview 30 years after he retired as if he was taking Flintstones vitamins and not amphetamines, but that's not big deal because those baseball players from the 60's and 70's are heroes and everyone was doing. So that makes it fine. Don't joke about PED's. It's a super-serious subject. 

Just so you know: The set-up at the ESPYs was that Jeong would act as Rodriguez’s surrogate as he finally “apologized” to the whole wide world.

So Rodriguez stood there like a prop and kept handing pieces of paper to Jeong, while McHale stood on the other side of Jeong looking as flop-sweat desperate to get laughs as he had been since his opening monologue.

It wasn't funny. There's no doubt about that. Again, A-Rod didn't write the skit and this participation in the skit is just a way for Lupica to remind everyone that A-Rod is a cheater and find something to be angry with him over. 

Nobody expects big yuks from award shows, at least when Tina Fey and Amy Poehler aren’t hosting them these days.

Mike Lupica: "A-Rod took place in an awards show skit that wasn't funny. How dare he do this while making the crowd uncomfortable with the lack of hilarity."

Mike Lupica: "Award show skits aren't ever funny, so nobody expected the ESPY's to be funny anyway."

But somebody thought this material was funny, and Alex Rodriguez clearly signed off on it, so on they went. And on.

Yes, I'm sure A-Rod spent a few days vetting the script and then re-writing portions of it to better capture his personality. After that, his agent signed off on it, but only after a few of A-Rod's demands were met. 

There was some weird, nervous laughter from the crowd occasionally. There was even a shot of Derek Jeter laughing, though it was hard to tell whether he was doing that to be polite, or just reveling in Rodriguez making himself a part of the show like this on a night when Jeter received a Sports Icon Award.

The Jeter has to make an appearance as the anti-thesis of what A-Rod has become. The Jeter is the Batman to A-Rod's Joker, the Superman to A-Rod's Lex Luthor. The Jeter was not impressed with A-Rod's skit, merely only laughing at how Rodriguez was making an ass of himself. One would think the on-the-field performance comparison between The Jeter and A-Rod at the age of 40 might be made, but there's no need for that. Rest assured, if The Jeter had a line of .304/.363/.438 last year this would be something Lupica brings up. He didn't, so there's no need to compare the two hitters at the age of 40.

By the way: Here is a part of what Jeter said upon receiving that award:

This is especially relevant point in a column about A-Rod participating in an unfunny skit. 

“I’ve had a special relationship with the fans and my teammates over the last 20 years, but in retirement I’ve come to realize that being a part of the larger community of sports is a gift — and more importantly it’s an honor. You’ve inspired me for years, and you continue to inspire me.”

(Bengoodfella wakes up because this was a boring and very cliched, yet kind, statement from The Jeter)

So Jeter took one route to the stage on this night and the guy who used to play to his right at Yankee Stadium took another.

It always comes back to a comparison between The Jeter and A-Rod...that is unless the comparison isn't flattering to The Jeter, in which case no comparison should be made. It's lazy writing, but nothing more should be expected from Lupica. 

Maybe you could have given Rodriguez some props for being able to laugh at himself on this occasion, except there were no laughs here, about “Game of Thrones” or droughts or Greece or the Knicks or any of it.

Yeah well, as you just wrote, nobody expects big yucks from awards shows. So I'm not sure why you would expect this skit to be funny based on your own opinion of award show skits.

At the very end of it, after Jeong stopped reading, McHale asked Rodriguez if there was anything he wanted to say and Rodriguez said, “I’m good.” Before that, of course, we got this supposedly edgy material from Alex Rodriguez’s faux apology at the ESPYs:

It's not funny. Who cares? Why is this unfunny skit worthy of a column being written about it? 

Yeah. These are the jokes. By the time it all ended, you felt as if you’d had to sit through one of those old four-hour Yankees-Red Sox games out of the past.

Brilliant writing by Lupica here. This is as opposed to one of those old four-hour Yankees-Red Sox games from the future or the present? Yeah, if those games are old then they must be out of the past. Mike Lupica is one of those old writers from the past who thinks his written word is the gospel and shall not be questioned. These are the things that happen when you've had an entire career of smoke being blown up your butt and choose to ignore any criticism others may have of you.

Maybe Rodriguez thinks he can be the kind of performer that we’ve found out Peyton Manning can be.

Yes, I'm sure at the age of 40 A-Rod has decided he's going to try and become the type of performer that Peyton Manning can be. More likely, A-Rod just took part in the skit without a long-term plan or a single thought of spring boarding a career off the skit.

Maybe he’s already thinking about a post-playing career in broadcasting, when his Yankee contract finally runs out sometime in the next century. But if he is considering a future career in show business, he might want to take a closer look at the material next time.

We all know Derek Jeter wouldn't take part in an unfunny skit for the ESPY's. He would never do that.

He has hit better than perhaps even he himself thought he ever would again. He’s said and done all the right things. Then came the ESPY Awards.

Yes, one unfunny skit at an awards show has ruined all of Alex Rodriguez's accomplishments over the 2015 season. This is a true and logical statement.

His arbitration hearing was funnier. This is the first dumb thing he’s done since Bosch.

Imagine how Mike Lupica would respond if A-Rod actually did anything worse than show bad taste in jokes made on an awards show. The fact that Mike Lupica actually took A-Rod's participation in this skit, managed to bring Derek Jeter into the discussion, and tried to make all of this into something more than bad comedy shows a dedication to the A-Rod hating craft that he may someday try to perfect...while sitting on the edge of his seat, trying to be as tall as possible and talking over others, of course. 

3 comments In a Shocking Twist of Events Sportswriter Who Hates Everything About Alex Rodriguez Hates His Apology Too

Mike Lupica is a self-important asshole who has singlehandedly disproved the theory that it pays off to be nice to people and that those who treat others like they want to be treated will be rewarded. You wouldn't have to search far to hear stories of how Mike Lupica believes himself to be superior to his fellow co-workers, his neighbors or any other human being walking on Earth or in Heaven/Hell. So A-Rod apologizes for using steroids and his other crimes of ego and vanity. It was either going to be enough for some or not enough for others and the decision was probably made which way this would go well before A-Rod actually wrote the apology. People hate everything A-Rod does or they don't. They believe him or they don't. Mike Lupica is on his high horse and can't just write, "I don't like Alex Rodriguez so I choose not to believe him." No, Lupica has to think of horseshit excuses WHY he knows that the apology doesn't ring true among fans, though Lupica is about as in touch with sports fans as Tony Bennett is with the latest dance craze. The last time Lupica watched a game with real sports fans was the one time he got locked out of the press box and had to watch the third quarter of a Knicks game in the last row of Madison Square Garden. Even then he probably forced anyone who he had to sit beside out of their seat so he wouldn't feel crowded as he leaned forward in his chair with his toes barely touching the ground. A-Rod is an asshole and a liar. I'm not sure there's any doubt about that, but Mike Lupica mocking A-Rod and trying to pretend he knows anything about what the real sports fan thinks is the real assholery and lie in this situation.

To the end with Alex Rodriguez you wouldn’t believe the guy if he told you water was wet, even if he wrote that out in the schoolboy cursive handwriting he used on Tuesday when he apologized to the fans for being a very bad boy.

(Mike Lupica if A-Rod didn't apologize): "The least A-Rod could do is set aside his mountainous ego and tell the truth for once, even if it isn't the truth. Just write a letter or make a statement saying you are sorry. Is that too much to ask?"

(Mike Lupica when A-Rod does apologize): "A-Rod apologized. He didn't mean it. This is just another lie to add to the rolodex of lies that A-Rod seems to be keeping around in a feeble effort to get back in the good graces of fans."

See, when someone hates another person, then NOTHING the other person will do can stop the other person from hating him. At a certain point, the person doing the hating gets tuned out or ignored. So I expect nothing from Lupica but hate towards A-Rod and his take on A-Rod's letter will never convince me of Lupica's point of view.

Most fans reading it probably wanted to write one back: Shut up and get out.

Mike Lupica has absolutely zero idea what fans wanted to write back. The big lie here is any time Mike Lupica claims to even be 1% in touch with modern sports fans and their feelings. It's hard to mingle with the people when you won't leave your pedestal.

So this is the way Rodriguez decides to play it, deciding not to hold some kind of press conference before spring training, opting out of the visual of his lawyer sitting next to him and telling him which questions he could answer, and which ones would require him to exercise his Fifth Amendment rights, so as not to face self-incrimination.

Quite a scene that Lupica has set up here. Obviously A-Rod was opting out of creating a circus around himself for his own benefit and the media will never have a chance to speak with A-Rod ever again during the 2015 season. Such a sneaky fellow to permanently escape the questions of the media as he has.

But then DEA informants — it is exactly what Rodriguez is — rarely want to tell their stories in public.

Snitches get stitches! Mike Lupica don't like it much when snitches start telling stories to the DEA. That's the right way to end up on the wrong side of Lupica's glock.

And yes, Mike Lupica is now criticizing Alex Rodriguez for helping to put a drug dealer behind bars. Because while it's not honorable necessarily, it's also not something that merits any form of criticism.

Now he tries to control his own cockeyed narrative about his drug use — is he really going to try to convince us once again that he didn’t know what he was buying from Bosch and using? — with a written apology that is like a nuanced legal brief, one in which the only thing he really admits is that he did an historic amount of time.

It never ends. The amount of blood required from A-Rod to make up for his previous transgressions will never be enough. Andy Pettitte is seen as fully honest in saying, "I used PED's, but I didn't use them to enhance my performance so fuck you for thinking that's why I did it." He gets a rub-and-tug from the New York media while the Yankees retire his jersey. Alex Rodriguez admits he cheated and apologizes, but he gets criticized by Mike Lupica for not giving up more information with which he can be criticized. Perhaps A-Rod would have been better off claiming he never took PED's to enhance his performance.

It is one thing to tell his story to a writer or to the new commissioner, Rob Manfred, behind closed doors. Or to do the same thing, again behind closed doors to Hal Steinbrenner of the Yankees and his team president, Randy Levine, and his general manager, Brian Cashman. It would have been quite another thing for Rodriguez to have answered questions out in the open without a lawyer present.

A-Rod told his story and was honest with the commissioner and nearly every important decision-maker with the Yankees team, but because Mike Lupica didn't get to hear A-Rod's story then obviously he hasn't come completely clean. The sense of entitlement from Lupica is astounding. A-Rod told his story to anyone who matters, but because he wasn't honest with a person who hates him, then that means A-Rod hasn't totally done his penance quite yet. I'd love to see if Mike Lupica would hold himself to this same standard. Of course he wouldn't. There are separate rules for athletes and Mike Lupica. Mike Lupica hasn't ever had to explain himself to anyone. No, he is the type of person who has others explain themselves TO HIM. He's an insecure bully who can't see past his own ego.

And that really wasn’t the visual he wanted, taking questions from the New York media and the national media, then having to stop for whispered conversations with his current attorney, Jim Sharp, before he might say something contradictory to what he has already told the feds;

And obviously A-Rod might say something contradictory to what he has told the feds, because he is a snitch and a liar. I bet Mike Lupica thinks that A-Rod took PED's given to him by Anthony Bosch, while also lying and framing Bosch for being a drug dealer. I wouldn't doubt that Lupica could hold those two separate, contradictory opinions. It hurts Lupica's little feelings that A-Rod may not owe him an explanation. Because if Lupica is not owed an explanation then that means he isn't as important as he believes himself to be. So like any child who doesn't get his way when he REALLY REALLY wants his way, Lupica throws a fit and accuses Rodriguez of dodging the truth, when in reality Rodriguez doesn't care to tell the media the truth. Mike Lupica doesn't want to be out of the loop or feel like he's less than his ego tells him he is. So naturally, he calls out A-Rod for only telling his story to those people that really matter and not to the media.

“I served the longest suspension in the history of the League for PED use,” he writes.

Which he did and it was cut down from an even longer sentence.

Notice the language here. Rodriguez never uses the word steroids, the way he never used that word back in 2009 when he begged everybody for his first second chance.

Yes, notice how Rodriguez doesn't admit to using the steroids that he didn't use. He used HGH and other PED's as defined by MLB, but not steroids. So yes, I did notice how A-Rod never actually admitted to taking the steroids that he wasn't suspended for taking.

He doesn’t say “my” PED use. Just PED use.

And given the fact he was writing an apology letter for using PED's, it was pretty fucking obvious to only the most thick-headed person that A-Rod was referring to his PED use. In fact, using the word "my" in this sentence would be somewhat redundant. By starting the sentence with "I" then it is clear A-Rod is referring to himself when talking about the suspension for PED use. If you are going to hate on A-Rod at least be good at it and don't sound so desperate. Rodriguez certainly isn't writing an apology letter on someone else's behalf while using the first person.

“I accept the fact that many of you will not believe my apology or anything I say at this point,” he writes. “I understand and that’s on me.”

There you have it, Rodriguez’s own weird version of accountability.

That really is his accountability. He's taking responsibility for his actions and saying he doesn't blame a person for not believing him. What else would Lupica have A-Rod say? This won't be revealed because Lupica has no idea what his expectations for A-Rod are. He just doesn't like A-Rod and stretches to rip him whenever possible.

Even as he asks the fans to believe how sorry he is for everything he’s done, he admits that the same fans to whom he is speaking probably don’t believe he’s really sorry.

Would Lupica have preferred if A-Rod has written, "You will believe my apology, I am sure of it"? Is that more preferable? Again, we won't ever find out because Mike Lupica has no idea what he wants A-Rod to say. He just doesn't want A-Rod to say what he just said.

It will come out in the ESPN piece written by J.R. Moehringer that Alex is in therapy these days. Of course he is. It is about time, and better late than never, for somebody who really could be the buffet at a psychiatrist’s convention.

Mental health. Always a hilarious topic for a good laugh to break up the seriousness of a grown-ass sportswriter throwing a fit that he wasn't included as a stop on an apology tour. I'm sure Lupica would enjoy a few good hearty jokes at the expense of his family having to deal with his egomania.

"I hear Mike Lupica's daughter is in therapy for anorexia. It's about time, after all the bullshit she's had to eat from her dad's mouth all these years she's bound to just throw up as much as possible."

See? It's all in good fun to make a few jokes about mental health. It's not at all an asshole and mean thing to do.

But nobody gets Rodriguez’s Oprah moment now in some big room or hall or under some circus tent somewhere, with a roomful of Oprah Winfreys firing questions at him the way Oprah fired them at Alex’s patron saint, Lance Armstrong.

Yes, nobody gets the big media event that Alex Rodriguez so obviously owes the world. He wrote a letter stating he was wrong and is trying to move on with his life after serving his suspension in order to cut down on as much of the distractions as possible in order to prepare for the upcoming season. It's a very selfish move. Most players would be lauded for publicly apologizing and then trying to make sure they are as small of a distraction as possible, but for Mike Lupica this is just another strike against A-Rod. He owes the world a circus and it's a mark against his character he won't provide one on demand.

Most of the fans to whom Rodriguez spoke on Tuesday — and from the heart! — are probably wishing that there was some way for Stoudemire to take Alex Rodriguez back to Texas with him.

Snark is fun. I still would love to know what Mike Lupica wanted A-Rod to do. Other than hold a press conference and answer all of the questions that the media isn't entitled to have answered to their own satisfaction of course. A-Rod has told his story to those people who matter, he apologized in cutesy form, and now he has stated he wants to move on. Hate it or love it, doesn't matter.

He writes an open letter the way Ray Rice wrote an open letter in the Baltimore Sun. Rice did it because he needs a job. Rodriguez has one, a real good one with the New York Yankees, at least $61 million still coming to him over the next few years.

So A-Rod didn't have to write the letter, but he did anyway. This is clearly another mark against A-Rod's character that he at least pretended to give a shit. Maybe if Lupica pretended to give a shit about his writing then he wouldn't be seen as the egomaniac bully that he's seen by many in the media as being.

Bosch, his drug dealer? He goes to jail now for 48 months, three months shy of the maximum sentence he could have gotten for operating the kind of drug ring he was operating.

I can't believe this drug dealer got close to the maximum sentence for his crime. Why isn't the court system easier on drug dealers?

The star of that ring, still batting cleanup there, still a big name at Biogenesis, was Alex Rodriguez. He doesn’t go to jail. He goes to spring training. Is this a great country or what?

Apparently Mike Lupica advocates for the drug user to go to jail, while the drug dealer roams free? What a great country this is! A-Rod uses the drugs, but he gets off scot free while the poor innocent guy who dealt the drugs had the book thrown at him. Why can't Mike Lupica live in a world where the authorities ignore cartels and go after the real people who create the drug problem, which is the drug user? Obviously the reason there is a drug problem in the United States is that law enforcement has been going after the people who deal the drugs when they should be going after the people who use the drugs.

Mike Lupica is really working hard to make A-Rod seem like a bad guy. He's taking the side of and advocating for a drug dealer now.

Even after he admitted to being a drug user, he managed to have his best baseball October and lead the Yankees to a World Series. Judge me on what I do going forward, he said back in 2009. That is exactly what everybody has done.

And absolutely judge A-Rod on what he's done since then, which includes his second PED-related offense. He's been judged and punished. He apologized and either accept it and shut up or don't accept it and tell everyone what A-Rod should have done instead of apologize. Oh, and call A-Rod a snitch for ratting on a drug dealer, as if this shows another moral fallacy in his genetic code.

Now he is back, panhandling for redemption and another second chance,

He's making $61 million and doesn't need redemption or a second chance because he's getting one simply because he's making $61 million. That's another point that Lupica misses. A-Rod doesn't need his forgiveness. He doesn't want to be hated, but he isn't Ray Rice trying to get back into the sport. A-Rod is a Yankee because they owe him too much money otherwise. So he doesn't have to apologize and he doesn't have to talk to Mike Lupica about his "story."

trying to make one last first impression, the richest drug informant in all of baseball history.

Boy, Mike Lupica is riding this whole "A-Rod told on a drug dealer" thing hard isn't he? I'm not sure calling A-Rod a snitch will have the effect he wants it to have.

One more record for Alex Rodriguez.

You are a petty, sad man who has mocked A-Rod for apologizing, seeking mental health assistance and think a drug dealer should go to jail for a shorter span of time than a drug user. No one likes A-Rod, but we are stuck with him. No one likes you. Go away. 

6 comments Mike Lupica Encourages Matt Harvey to Come Sit on His Lap, For There Is a Lecture He Must Hear

The picture accompanying this article by Mike Lupica has a Photoshopped picture of Matt Harvey with a pacifier in his mouth. That about sums up the journalistic integrity of this column. I can see Lupica being irate at the fact there was no Photoshopped picture of Matt Harvey accompanying his article, so he runs around the newsroom---I'm just kidding, Mike Lupica believes himself to be above his co-workers so he would never lower himself to the level of being present in the newsroom---I can imagine Lupica writing an angry email about how his article is about to be posted in 20 MINUTES and there is NO PICTURE OF MATT HARVEY WITH THE ARTICLE? THIS ISN'T HOW JOURNALISM SHOULD BE DONE ON A DEADLINE! So Lupica gets his picture and writes about how Matt Harvey should trust the doctors and stop trying to work his way back to play for the Mets this year. Even though Derek Jeter would be canonized for doing the same thing, it's bad when someone the New York media doesn't like tries to work his way back from injury sooner than he should.

This isn't the first time the New York media has picked nits with Matt Harvey. Bob Klapisch interviewed Ron Darling about how Matt Harvey should not tempt the ladies with his sexiness. Of course Ron Darling was on the cover of a magazine showing off his sexiness when he played for the Mets, but that's not at all hypocrisy.

Anthony Rieber was angry that Matt Harvey flipped off the camera with his middle finger prior to his Tommy John surgery.

It's like the New York media takes non-stories around Matt Harvey and desperately tries to turn them into stories. Never one to miss out, Mike Lupica has joined the chorus of New York media members who nit-pick Matt Harvey. I imagine Lupica is sitting on the edge of his seat while he writes this column, disappointed he has no one to interrupt in order to help get his point across.

I know you are saying, Ben, what on Earth could Matt Harvey have done? Well, he is trying to use aggressive rehab to come back and pitch for the Mets this season. Quite frankly, that's unacceptable. Matt Harvey should not be risking his future to help the Mets this season, even though there seems to be nothing wrong with trying to come back and help the team.

One of these days, Matt Harvey needs to remember — and that probably means before he hurts his arm again — that his job is to be a star young baseball pitcher, not some sort of needy celebrity who acts as if he gets the bends when he is out of the spotlight for very long.

And this is coming from a sportswriter who has spent most of his career trying to be a celebrity who writes instead of a sportswriter, until he has slowly turned himself into a talentless shrill little man who prefers to lecture others on what they do wrong as he sits on the edge of his seat, imposing his viewpoint and will on anyone and everyone who will listen. It's funny to me that Mike Lupica would lecture someone about getting the bends if he is out of the spotlight for very long. Lupica craves the spotlight and you don't have to search hard to find examples of fellow sportswriters who simply don't like him and think he's an asshole. So if Mike Lupica were an athlete, he would probably be one of those athletes that Mike Lupica the sportswriter would lecture about growing up and being a team player in one of his columns. 

Understand something: The Mets need Harvey a lot more than he needs them, as long as he comes all the way back from Tommy John surgery and pitches for them the way Stephen Strasburg is now pitching for the Washington Nationals, a team in the NL East that treats the Mets like they’re a farm team.

Great, I understand that. Mike Lupica should understand something: If Matt Harvey took too long (as perceived by Mike Lupica of course...Lupica tells Matt Harvey to trust the doctors, but if Mike Lupica doesn't like the slow rehab progress Harvey is making then I'm sure Mike would question Harvey's motivation and the doctor(s) who suggested this slow rehab), then you know Mike Lupica would criticize Harvey for taking too long in his recovery. There is an appropriate time to come back from Tommy John surgery that only Mike Lupica is privy to. Coming back to help a team whose season is lost is not acceptable. Coming back slowly and not feeling 100% in late February is unacceptable. Matt Harvey MUST be 100% in November and feel great for Spring Training. There is no moving up or back this timetable that Dr. Mike Lupica has set for Matt Harvey. 

It is why the Mets, and that means ownership and general manager Sandy Alderson and Terry Collins, still have to be as careful handling Harvey right now as Harvey should be with a right arm that still could make him a couple of hundred million dollars before he is through.

Thank God that Mike Lupica is looking out for Matt Harvey. Every athlete needs a sportswriter telling him what to and not to do with his career and life. Of course, when it comes to telling others what they should or should not be doing, Mike Lupica is eager to take on this role. 

But he really needs to stop acting like a spoiled child, even if he believes — because he absolutely has that right — to think he knows more about his arm than anybody else except his doctors; and that it is his arm, not theirs.

Let's go through some Lupica logic here: 

-Matt Harvey needs to be careful with his arm, because it will help him earn millions of dollars in the future. 

-Matt Harvey should stop acting like a spoiled child for believing he knows more about his arm than anyone else except his doctors. 

-Matt Harvey has the right to believe he knows more about his arm than anyone else except his doctors. 

-It is Matt Harvey's arm, so he has the right to do what he wants with it. 

-Matt Harvey should make a decision based on what anybody else except he and his doctors think is the right decision for his arm. 

-Matt Harvey is a spoiled child for following an aggressive rehab schedule his doctors don't seem to be against and instead should be following what anybody else thinks is the right decision for his arm. 

So Matt Harvey has the right to do what he wants with his arm, except he doesn't have the right in Mike Lupica's opinion, and Lupica believes he is acting like a spoiled child for exercising that right that Mike Lupica believes he has. 

maybe the kid thinks he knows more than the doctors, too.

HE PROBABLY DOES, MIKE! FOLLOW THAT NARRATIVE! IT WILL HELP YOU PUMP OUT ANOTHER CONDESCENDING ARTICLE IN A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME!

But one of these days he really does need to get it through his head that his job, even rehabbing from surgery, is baseball pitcher, and not celebrity.

I don't understand this "celebrity" thing. I feel like Lupica has latched on to the idea Harvey wants to be a celebrity and he refuses to give up on this idea, even when it isn't relevant. Harvey is trying to come back and pitch one inning during the 2014 season. This goal has seemingly nothing to do with being a celebrity.

Maybe some of this is our fault, because it seems in a very short period of time, we’ve convinced Harvey that we are hanging on his every word, and his next move, even when he isn’t pitching for the Mets.

This is sort of like how Mike Lupica has become convinced the world is hanging on every word he says and writes? Or is it different in that Lupica has such a huge ego, the fact he became successful in his career path only served to further prove to Lupica the truth of his own greatness? 

I understand that there are Mets fans that will feel better about everything, about Matt Harvey and his future and the future of the Mets and next season, if he does get back on the mound this season.

I realize Lupica is so far up his own butt that he didn't think about this, but maybe Matt Harvey will feel better getting back on the mound this year? Could this not be about celebrity, but about Harvey making himself feel better about his rehab?

There is just no point to this. If you are a Mets fan, do you really need to hear that Harvey is throwing the ball 90 miles per hour these days, and putting it where he wants to, which means he is throwing for real?

Yes, as a Mets fan I would absolutely need to hear this. Hearing Harvey is throwing the ball well and where he wants to would allow me to know as a Mets fan that the franchise pitcher seems to be making a complete comeback from major elbow surgery. The fact Mike Lupica can't understand why Mets fans are interested in knowing how Matt Harvey is throwing the baseball only serves to show just how out of touch he is with the very same fans who read his columns and Lupica claims to understand. 

Maybe if he could come riding over the hill like the First Army in a real division race, and a real wild-card race, and be the hero of September, you could start to wrap your mind around him moving up the timetable of his return.

So it is only worth coming back and pitching if there is something to pitch for? I can understand this point of view, but the issue is that Harvey isn't wanting to pitch 100 innings, he wants to pitch a few innings and prove to himself that he can pitch. The Mets are within their right to not allow this, but it doesn't make Harvey a spoiled child for requesting it. 

The Mets aren’t going to get a wild-card, either. So we are talking about 2015 already. Maybe the conversation has really been about 2015 since Harvey got hurt last summer.

The conversation was about 2015 even if Harvey was healthy all season. He would not have made such a massive difference in the Mets' record that they would have made the playoffs with him being healthy. 

Give him all benefits of the doubt here. Harvey, in so many ways, feels like Mets fans, the ones who still care and the ones who still come to Citi Field:

Wait, so Mike Lupica writes a column calling Matt Harvey a "spoiled child," features a Photoshopped picture of Harvey with a pacifier in his mouth, and states Harvey should grow up, but then he writes that Harvey should be given "all benefits of the doubt here." This makes not of sense. You can't bash the guy, say Harvey has a right to do what he wants, bash Harvey for exercising this right, and then say Harvey should get the benefit of the doubt. If anyone isn't giving Harvey the benefit of the doubt, it is Mike Lupica. Of course Lupica is the lecturer, not the lecturee. That's not how his ego works. 

There is a baseball season going on and he doesn’t want to sit the whole thing out. That is why he pretty much does everything besides hire a skywriter to tell the world he is fired up and ready to go.

Right, and you have called him a "spoiled child" for not wanting to sit the baseball season out. Find a mirror, look in it and see the person looking back at you. THAT is the person criticizing Matt Harvey for wanting to come back this season. Yell at him. 

But Terry Collins, who may or may not get to manage Harvey next season, is absolutely right to tell Harvey to back off. It is a polite way of telling the kid to shut up and pitch. Next season.

The Mets are within their right to say this to Harvey. 

And to get over himself while this season plays out.

Yes, Harvey should get over himself by exercising his right to know what's best for his arm and for attempting to come back and pitch this season. Harvey shouldn't try to be a celebrity by moving up the timetable for his rehab and trying to pitch this season. Mike Lupica hates people who try to compete with him for celebrity in the New York sports world. 

From this same article: 

Next Thursday night on Randall’s Island, I will be the chair umpire for a doubles match between the team of John McEnroe and Henrik Lundqvist and Novak Djokovic and actor Edward Norton to benefit the Johnny Mac Tennis Project.

Matt Harvey, THAT is how you become a celebrity. Name-drop athletes and actors in a rambling column where you call out a 25 year old from the safety of a computer for being a spoiled child and wanna-be celebrity by trying an aggressive rehab approach in order to re-join his team as soon as possible.

0 comments It's Never Too Early to Panic About the Preseason

Mike Lupica likes being critical (Bengoodfella looks in the mirror sadly because this probably describes him too) and he's very good at telling everyone what they should or should not be doing. He has opinions on President Obama golfing too much, what George Steinbrenner would do, and how "You're the Worst" should actually be a television show about Alex Rodriguez. Mike is very concerned about the New York Giants after their preseason performances on offense and so he decides to write a column where he asks questions that can't be answered until the games start. Still, these are VERY IMPORTANT QUESTIONS based on preseason games. Mostly, Lupica seems concerned the Jets have their shit together more than the Giants do. This type of tyranny will not stand.

At least about this there can be no question: If the Giants are allowed to play other teams’ second-team and even third-team defenses with their second-team offense this season, then they might be favorites to win another Super Bowl.

Hilarious. Eli Manning sucks because it's the preseason and he hasn't won the Super Bowl yet.

Are you kidding? Give the ball to Ryan Nassib, Eli Manning’s backup, in the second half in August and look out.

And as everybody knows, how a backup quarterback plays in the preseason against other backups will immediately translate to that backup quarterback playing well in the regular season against the starters.

This time it was the Jets and this time Nassib threw three touchdown passes and the Giants won again, making it 4-0 in the preseason,

Everyone panic! The Giants are 4-0 in the preseason but haven't looked good while being 4-0. This portends trouble in the future because the Giants aren't winning in the sexy way that Mike Lupica requires the Giants to win. Derek Jeter would not accept a 4-0 record if those wins weren't earned in the right way, so why should the Giants say they are 4-0 when it's only their backups winning preseason games? A panic needs to happen, grab your pitchforks, Mike Lupica is storming the streets of New York.

which means this is the most meaningless and fascinating and frightening unbeaten preseason — to Giants fans — in all of team history.

No, this is the most meaningless, fascinating, and frightening unbeaten preseason in NFL history. Is a 4-0 record really an unbeaten record if Mike Lupica refuses to regard it as so? You know the answer before I even finished the question...of course not. The Giants may be 4-0 in the preseason, but these meaningless preseason games definitely mean something for the upcoming season because Mike Lupica has a column he needs to write and this is the only idea he had for a column.

Because when you add up everything we have seen and everything that has happened since the preseason began in Canton, the two most positive developments on offense are these:

1. Eli Manning isn't injured.

2. It's preseason and teams don't always game plan so an offensive/defensive unit's performance may mean very little?

-One two-minute drill from Eli at the end of the first half on Friday night.
-A rookie receiver out of Division II Newberry College named Corey Washington, who has looked like this year’s Victor Cruz even if he has been mostly playing with Second-Half Nassib and Curtis Painter.

I tell you, Mike Lupica works hard. He works hard to discredit any type of success the Giants had in preseason so that he can sound the alarm bells. The Giants may have found an undrafted free agent receiver who can complement Victor Cruz, but that's not going to be enough for Mike Lupica because Washington looked good with Nassib and Painter throwing him the football. Since Eli Manning sucks, how much will Washington's skills drop off when Eli is throwing him the ball?

But whatever happened against the Jets, and that includes all the good things that happened once Eli got the ball for the last time Friday night, Tom Coughlin’s new offense — the vision of new offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo — will enter the regular season with so many more questions to it than answers it’s not even close.

You mean the Giants team hasn't immediately figured out a new offense with one offseason of work in the new system? If the Giants' offensive players can't grasp a new system immediately then that system will obviously be a failure. It's not like NFL playbooks are complicated or anything.

We keep hearing that because of the new offense, the Giants might get off to a slow start. Gee, there’s good news. How did last season’s slow start work out?

The 2007 Giants started off 0-2 and they won the Super Bowl.

The 2011 Giants were 6-6 and they managed to win the Super Bowl.

But no really, I'm sure the slow start the Giants may hypothetically have can only mean the 2014 season will be a waste. Why even bother to play?

There are still new guys at right guard and left guard and center and a tackle, Will Beatty, coming back from a broken leg.

And the Giants are the only NFL team with question marks after the preseason is over. There must be panic about this, because how can the Giants be expected to compete with all of these other perfect NFL teams who don't have roster questions?

now that Hakeem Nicks is catching balls again and running at full speed, he’s doing all that for the Colts. 

If only the Giants would have known that Nicks would be healthy and could contribute, they could have kept Nicks on the roster. Mike Lupica is great at pointing out which free agents the Giants should have kept after those players have been signed by another team and appear to be healthy. If he were a GM, Mike Lupica would be Executive of the Year if he were allowed to wait until the end of the NFL season and then point out what moves his team should have made.

If Corey Washington does not turn out to be the new Victor Cruz, tell me who the second-most reliable wide receiver is after Cruz.

If Eli Manning dies in a parachuting accident, tell me who the best quarterback on the roster is again?

If the Giants' new stadium spontaneously combusted under the weight of Mike Lupica's ego, then where would the Giants play their home games?

If Tom Coughlin has a heart attack on the sidelines, is Ben McAdoo ready for a head coaching job? WHY HASN'T THIS BEEN ANSWERED IN THE PRESEASON GAMES YET?

Tell me how much you think the Giants are going to get out of tight end.

Who knows? Plenty of teams have succeeded without having a Pro Bowl tight end.

Tell me how sure you are that an almost entirely rebuilt offensive line is going to protect a quarterback who took the kind of beating that Eli took a year ago, especially since so many guys on that offensive line should still be wearing name tags.

And of course because Mike Lupica doesn't know the names of the offensive linemen then this must mean these offensive linemen are terrible at protecting Eli Manning. Mike Lupica is a gold mine of knowledge when it comes to the NFL after all, it's not like he just reacts based on what he's seen from the last game or anything.

And please tell me that you think the Giants of Coughlin and Manning, who haven’t won a single playoff game around those two Super Bowls, who haven’t even made the playoffs lately, are ready to take back the NFC East from Chip Kelly’s Philadelphia Eagles.

The Giants don't have to make the playoffs. They can win this thing called the "Wild Card" which means they just need to have at least the fifth or sixth best record in the NFC to make the playoffs. I understand the concept of the Wild Card isn't relatively new, but Mike Lupica has been busy talking over people on television and lecturing the President of the United States, so he probably hasn't had time to learn about this new "Wild Card" thingie.

Going into the regular season the Jets look a lot more organized on offense, even with a second-year quarterback, than the Giants do. And the Jets are a team built around defense.

And because the Jets are built around defense, there is no way they could be organized on offense. Teams built around defense are unorganized on offense, just like teams built around offense usually only have 9-10 guys playing defense on the field due to not having hired anyone who knows how to coordinate a defense.

It doesn’t mean the Giants can’t figure this out when the games count, far from it.

RETREAT! RETREAT!

Mike Lupica has some hot takes about the many questions surrounding the Giants' preseason performance and coats them in doubt about whether the team can be good enough offensively at the beginning of the season to win games, but then is all like, "But you know, it's preseason so who gives a shit...now back to how screwed the Giants are based on their preseason performance."

Nothing like having it both ways, huh? Lupica writes an entire article about how the preseason performance of the Giants means the team is disorganized, the offensive isn't being picked up quickly enough, and there are only two positives to take out of the preseason, but then wants to act like none of these things matter. He's got his bases covered. If the Giants struggle, he can spit out a "I told you the Giants were in trouble" column and if the Giants start out strong he can spit out a "The Giants had issues that I covered in a column, but as I said, it was preseason, and credit goes to the Giants for figuring out and correcting all of the huge problems that I alone pointed out the team had."

We have seen them struggle before in the preseason, but that was when Eli was fully in his comfort zone with Kevin Gilbride’s offense, the only one he has ever known as a professional football player.

Mike Lupica is now acknowledging all of this teeth grinding means nothing. It's typical shitty writing from Lupica that he takes the time to point out how the Giants are screwed if they start off slow (like last year and how did that turn out?!), but then say, "Oh, teams start off slow all the time." Keep riding that middle ground, Mike. Rip the team, but don't rip them hard enough to where your ego gets bruised if you are wrong.

Of course this continues to be the most unusual era in the 90 years of the Giants: Coughlin and Eli winning those two Super Bowls and not winning a single playoff game in any other season they have been together.

Sure, that's odd. I would take the trade-off though.

“No, (I’m) not concerned at this point,” Manning said. “I know we have to keep working and keep getting better. It is not where it needs to be, but I thought there was progress in today’s game. We are going to keep working. It’ll be better and better as things go on and hopefully it will be better next week and better for that opening game. We should be in a better situation. It is not going to be complete at that point. We are going have to continue to make improvements throughout the season.”

They have had four preseason games now. No one is saying the new schemes and the new approach should be “complete” by now.

Mike Lupica earlier in the column:

Tom Coughlin’s new offense — the vision of new offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo — will enter the regular season with so many more questions to it than answers it’s not even close. We keep hearing that because of the new offense, the Giants might get off to a slow start. Gee, there’s good news.

Lupica didn't use the word "complete," but he certainly seems to expect the Giants to have more answers about the offense than they have and finds a slow start to be unacceptable. So it seems like Lupica expects the Giants' offense to be complete without too much more room for improvement.

But you have to believe the first-team Giants’ offense should look better than it does, with one more preseason game, this Thursday night, to play. You would have thought they would have looked good moving the football more than once.

Possibly, but doesn't the fact the second-team offense has looked good mean that some of the Giants players are picking up the new offensive system and can find success in it? I guess not.

You can only imagine what the conversation would be like today if Eli hadn’t taken them down the field that one time Friday night. The Giants defense is going to be better this season, and maybe a lot better than it was last season.

But this doesn't matter because the Giants are a team built around offense. There's no way they can win games with their defense if they are an offensive team. It's impossible for the offense to struggle while the defense excels and the Giants to win games as a result.

It won’t matter if scoring touchdowns is as difficult for this team as scoring runs for the Yankees has been.

And of course Mike ends being negative. Here is Mike Lupica's take on the Giants offense in the preseason.

-It's preseason and the Giants offense hasn't looked good, which means they will start the season off slowly.

-There are so many questions the Giants have that weren't answered in the preseason. This is a bad sign for things to come.

-Who cares? It's preseason.

-The Giants have started slow before with an offense they already know, so their struggles in McAdoo's offense can mean nothing. The Giants' first-team offense doesn't necessarily need to move the ball in the preseason.

-The Giants first-team offense needs to move the ball in the preseason.

-The Giants first-team offense struggling in the preseason means something and if the defense has to carry the team then the Giants won't win games.

-Defense can't win games, except for the Jets who built a team around defense to win games.

Mike Lupica is the best at trying to be the worst. Does anyone like him?

5 comments Mike Lupica Says Once Derek Jeter Retires the Dynasty Era That Lupica Believes Ended 14 Years Ago Will End

Mike Lupica thinks it's the end of the dynasty era when Derek Jeter retires. Of course Mike Lupica doesn't seem to really think the Yankees have had a dynasty era in 14 years because they have only won 1 World Series in the last 14 seasons. So the idea he believes it's the end of an era that didn't really exist causes me to marvel at him. What I would really like to read Mike Lupica talk about is his salary compared to how his newspaper is having another round of layoffs. Maybe the end of another era at the Daily News would help keep the newspaper in business and prevent future layoffs. Regardless, Lupica is very sad the era he believes ended 14 years ago will end after Jeter retires and I can picture him sadly sitting at the front of his chair on the back porch of his mansion listening to Chris Isaak and thinking he only has a few more fawning Derek Jeter columns to write for the rest of his career. After all, who will carry the old-fashioned Yankees values once Jeter is gone? My question is who carried the old-fashioned Yankees values prior to Jeter? We never get the answer to that question, because as Lupica says to end this column, "there is no one," not after this year.

The Yankees had Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams, and for a time it was as storied a five as the Knicks once had in the old days.

It was Camelot, but then it was ruined by the Yankees signing expensive free agents like A-Rod, Jason Giambi, and Jared Wright (remember that?). You know, the same guys the New York media stated the Yankees HAD to sign in order to keep winning.

Gas was a dollar, everyone mowed their lawn and respected their elders, crime was down, a man's word used to mean something, and a company would treat their employees with dignity. Those were the days.

One by one they all left, and now it is only Jeter left. And when he is gone at the end of this season, the Yankees will go on, the brand of the Yankees will go on, the big business of the Yankees sure will.

But a little bit of Mike Lupica's heart will retire with Derek Jeter.

Oh, we will continue to hear about how the pinstripes and the uniform and the place will transform the new hired guns they bring in.

But it won't be the same because it won't be the good old days. That is until the Yankees start a new dynasty after winning a few World Series and then the tradition of the pinstripes and uniform will retire with the last player from that team. Mike Lupica will then write a column bemoaning the loss of the good old days never to be seen again, until they are.

The Yankees have only had one World Series title over those same 14 years, even as they are constantly treated and covered like some sort of sleeping baseball giant about to rise up and roar again.

Mike Lupica: "The dynasty era of the Yankees retires when Derek Jeter retires in 2014."

Mike Lupica: "The Yankees haven't really been a dynasty since about 2001. It's just been hype around the Yankees since that time."

So the time period Mike Lupica is pining for hasn't existed by his own admission in over a decade. So doesn't that mean the dynasty era for the Yankees really ended shortly after the 90's ended? Just because Jeter was on the team doesn't mean the dynasty continued. I guess it's a better narrative to write that the dynasty era for the Yankees ends with Jeter's retirement. Even if Lupica's own opinion doesn't agree with this position he is taking, it does provide a clean narrative to further elevate Derek Jeter into a status above being a deity. And that's the real goal, to put Derek Jeter on a pedestal until he no longer is just a man, but is a supernatural being capable of anything and everything. Derek Jeter the baseball player has again been overshadowed by the sportswriters who cover him wanting to give him characteristics of that greater than "just" a baseball player. It's a shame.

But once Jeter is gone, there is no one who connects to any of that. There really is no one.

Unless you want to count Joe Girardi as connected to it. Also, few MLB teams have players on their roster that are connected to what the team was like a decade ago. Players come and go so often in the majors, even Andy Pettitte left the Yankees for a while. So I wouldn't expect there to be anyone who connects to the Yankees four World Series titles in the 90's.

It is why the notion that Jeter got too much money in that last contract scrum he had with the Yankees a few years ago was always so chowderheaded, and short-sighted.

So it was smart to pay Jeter for being the last link to a dynasty that hasn't existed for 14 years? That seems to be Mike Lupica's point of view. Get Luis Sojo a contract extension immediately!

You could never properly quantify what Jeter has meant to the brand, and still means.

It turns out Derek Jeter wanted to be quantified in terms of money and the Yankees obliged. Yes, his contributions to the Yankees brand can't be quantified, but when discussing a contract extension there is a quantifiable way to measure what Jeter is worth. It doesn't matter whether the Yankees overpaid or not for that, but giving a player money based on his link to a dynasty in the past is an easy way to waste money on an underperforming player.

Tim Duncan will never be treated or considered the way Jeter has been, like that kind of surpassing and iconic star of this time in American sports. Duncan never had New York, never had the Yankees, never was marketed that way because he frankly didn’t want to be.

These two players are not comparable because Duncan never played in New York and never was marketed the way Derek Jeter was marketed (which doesn't mean Jeter searched for the spotlight or was in any way wanting to be in the spotlight because the narrative is that Jeter is humble). Mike Lupica doesn't see how these two players could be compared in terms of iconic status.

Now Mike Lupica will compare Tim Duncan and Derek Jeter after saying they don't have the same iconic status.

But the two of them are remarkably the same, and not just because they have each won five championships.

Duncan came along in 1997, one year after Jeter became the Yankee starter at shortstop. Only now, after all the winning he has done with the Spurs, he still is part of the Core Three in San Antonio along with Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker.

It's not really a Core Three like the Yankees had the Core Four. Parker and Ginobili weren't around for every NBA title that Tim Duncan has won with the Spurs. I get what Lupica is trying to prove, but it's still different from the Core Four winning all of the World Series titles together.

The supporting cast in San Antonio, incidentally, has been replenished without spending a fortune year after year — after year — on hired guns.

The financial structure used in the NBA is totally different of that used in the NBA. Namely, there is no salary cap in MLB. If Mike Lupica can't understand this difference then he's even more ignorant and ill-informed then I originally thought he was. The Yankees have a much larger budget they are able to use in order to acquire players, while the Spurs are a slave to the soft cap in the NBA.

You tell me who carries on all the old-Yankee values and traditions at Yankee Stadium once Jeter is gone for good.

Only if you tell me who carried on the old-Yankee values and traditions at Yankee Stadium before Jeter showed up in New York?

Don Mattingly? He never won a World Series and we all know winning World Series titles is part of the Yankee tradition.

Reggie Jackson? I mean, maybe, but I don't think of old-school Yankees values when I think of him.

Thurman Munson? Perhaps that's the best answer I can think of. He last played for the Yankees in 1979 and Jeter didn't come down from heaven to grace us with his presence until 1996. There were 17 years without a Yankee who carried on the old Yankee values and traditions. I think 17 years from now there will be another one. Lupica may be leaning forwards in his rocking chair at that point obnoxiously interrupting the other nursing home residents while arguing over whose turn it is to choose the nightly television show, but simply because no Yankee is present in 2014 that can carry on the old-Yankee values and traditions (and I'm going to need a list of these values and traditions so I can check this future candidate's credentials off...or else this just sounds like useless hyperbole that Mike Lupica is using) doesn't mean in 2017 or 2022 another Yankee won't be carrying on these traditions. Bryce Harper will be a free agent in a few years. Maybe he can do it.

I used to love it when people used to say that Jeter wasn't a vocal leader with the Yankees. It was never words with him, it isn't words now, it was and is the way he went about his business and, along with the Core Four Plus Bernie, and Joe Torre, changed the way people thought and felt about the Yankees, whether they were Yankee fans or not.

This is absolutely true. Prior to 1996 I had no strong feelings about the Yankees, but then post-1996 when every writer was up the Yankees' ass as they won World Series after World Series I began to despise them with every fiber of my soul. Getting to hear about how great Jeter was and how the Yankees were the most perfect team to ever exist (okay, maybe it wasn't stated that way), along with them defeating my favorite team twice in the World Series, changed the way I thought about them. May they rot in Hell. That's the summary of my feelings towards the Yankees post-1996, as compared to indifference prior to that.

The current manager of the team is a good guy. CC Sabathia seemed to embrace the culture before he broke down this way, and the back end of his contract became the pitching version of Alex Rodriguez's.

And who could ever have foreseen that a pitcher on the wrong side of 30 with previous weight issues and 2800 regular season innings on his arm would start to break down as he reached the age of 34? I'm shocked this happen. Of course, if the Yankees didn't re-sign Sabathia then Mike Lupica would be complaining the Yankees can't keep the good pitchers they already have on the roster, because they are too cheap to do so.

We will never know how Robinson Cano's presence and excellence — and the fact that he was actually the first star, homegrown position player since Jeter — would have factored into all of this, because the Yankees chose not to give him 10 years at a time when they gave Jacoby Ellsbury seven.

(Fast forward five years when Mike Lupica is writing a column about Robinson Cano if the Yankees had re-signed him)

"Robinson Cano seems like a nice guy. It's hard to know since he rarely speaks and doesn't seem like much of a presence around the clubhouse. He hustles to first base more than he used to, which is nice for a guy making $24 million per year. He's never embraced the culture, even after signing up to be a Yankee for life. If $240 million can't convince a guy to embrace the culture, then nothing will. The Yankees chose to give him a 10 year contract and now it's become the position player version of CC Sabathia's contract, which was the pitching version of Alex Rodriguez's contract."

Lupica is going to complain no matter what. That's the point.

For now, Jeter gets people to keep coming to the ballpark in numbers commensurate with what the Yankees have drawn in the past, so people can continue operating under the illusion that they are as big and entertaining as ever, when clearly they are not.

And yet again, the dynasty era that Mike Lupica seems to be mourning the loss of after the 2014 season seems to have been lost many years prior to the 2014 season.

But this is the last farewell tour that matters at the Stadium.

(Makes a wanking motion with his hand)

It's the last farewell tour that matters at Yankee Stadium until the next farewell tour that matters at Yankee Stadium. It may not be for 20 years, but there will be another farewell tour and another Yankees that upholds the nameless, description-less idea of what a Yankee really should be. It's just a matter of time and there will be another great homegrown Yankee player. Just as long as they stop trading these homegrown players for guys like Chase Headley.

The dynasty ended a long time ago. Those days are gone, the way the big Yankees who helped Jeter win four World Series in five years are long gone.

So I must ask again, if the dynasty ended a long time ago then how is Jeter's retirement the end of the dynasty era for the Yankees? The dynasty ended with Jeter still on the roster. I know, it's a horrifying thought that goes against all of the deification of Jeter, but it seems to be true.

I also like how Lupica writes "the big Yankees who helped Jeter win four World Series in five years" as if Jeter singlehandedly won those World Series and guys like Rivera, Wetteland, Martinez, Pettitte, Clemens, and Scott Brosius were just along for the ride. Revisionist history is always a fun game to play. It rids the mind of reality and puts the world into the shape the author wants to view that world.

The dynasty effectively ended, as my friend Buster Olney wrote in a book once, with Game 7 of the 2001 World Series against the Diamondbacks.

THEN HOW CAN JETER'S RETIREMENT (CHECKS THE HEADLINE) MARK THE END OF EVERYTHING THE DYNASTY ERA REPRESENTS? EVERYTHING THE DYNASTY REPRESENTED DIED BEFORE JETER RETIRED ACCORDING TO YOU.

The Yankee name will always be treated like the royalty of American sports, properly so. It does better these days than the Celtics or Lakers or Dallas Cowboys.

(Continues making wanking motion with his hand)

The face of that royalty, more than anyone, as much as anybody the Yankees have ever had, has been Jeter.

I'm sure sportswriters wrote this about Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig (who I would argue is the face of the Yankees), Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, and any number of Yankees who have played for the team through the years.

The Yankees will go on, and will win again. It just won’t be like the winning they got from Jeter and Bernie and Mo, Pettitte and Posada. And Paul O'Neill.

If the Yankees win another World Series while Lupica is still writing for the Daily News he will be the very first to write something like, "This World Series meant more because it was won without the Core Four, without the weight and blessing they brought to the Yankees roster. This World Series victory proved there is life after Jeter and it's even sweeter for that reason." 

The next World Series victory will inevitably be described as better than those won with the Core Four + Bernie. I can almost guarantee it.

There will never again be a time like this. Jeter takes that with him. 

The contest to see which sportswriter can put Derek Jeter on the highest pedestal may have a new contender with Mike Lupica. He's saying that Jeter's time with the Yankees will never be topped. It was the peak of the Yankees organization and his time will never be duplicated in another form. That's some high deification right there.

They can buy a lot at Yankee Stadium, maybe even one more postseason for Derek Jeter.

Which, perhaps not ironically, has contributed to there being fewer homegrown stars and fewer candidates to replace Jeter as the face of the old-Yankees traditions and values. If the Yankees keep trading prospects to contend and get Jeter to another World Series, then that odds of another homegrown star or group of stars coming up through the system diminishes. I'm sure Mike Lupica is too busy yelling on the edge of his chair to realize this.

But when he goes, in all the ways that matter at the Stadium, there is no one.

It does seem like sportswriters are in a contest to see who can make Derek Jeter the biggest deity possible. I'm waiting for the inevitable column directly comparing Derek Jeter to Jesus, to where it's stated Jesus couldn't do some of things that Derek Jeter can do and Jeter can't do some of the things Jesus could do, but they are pretty much the same person. 

6 comments Alex Rodriguez Schadenfreude? Yes, Please.

There are very few things sports columnists seem to enjoy than the misfortunes of others. More specifically, there are few things New York/New Jersey area sports columnists enjoy more than the misfortune of Alex Rodriguez. Now that Alex Rodriguez has been linked to Biogenesis of America, which apparently is a "steroid lab," the New York/New Jersey area columnists are having a field day talking about A-Fraud (it's funny, true AND a play on words!). Bob Klapisch and Mike Lupica seem to be the two that had the most fun immediately after it was found that A-Rod was a client of Biogenesis. There's nothing these guys like better than to kick someone while they are down and they get joy out of doing so.

Let's start with Bob Klapisch, who as a person with access to a computer and forum with Newjersey.com, is fully qualified to sum up A-Rod's legacy. I'm not going to defend A-Rod, but anything that happens negative to him is like chum in the water for sportswriters to start doing some moral grandstanding...though due to his height Mike Lupica may have to do his moral grandstanding on a chair so we can all see him. 

A-Rod has been linked (again) to performance-enhancing drugs, as recently as last season, putting the finishing touches on his now-utterly trashed legacy — baseball’s all-time fraud.

If A-Rod has been using PED's recently then it seems he isn't doing them right. The least he could do if he planned on using PED's is to put up some great statistics and stay healthy. Unless...A-Rod thought that would tip everyone off so he used Wal-Mart-brand PED's that would improve his performance, but not to the point it would tip anyone off to what he was doing to improve his performance due to the poor quality of the product. Either way, the moral of this story is that you shouldn't shop at Wal-Mart.

That would be reason enough to send A-Rod into hiding, but there’s an even more compelling reason to write him off now. It’s the psychological dependency on PEDs — he’s been hooked all along and was too weak to ever stop.

Murray Chass heard a rumor A-Rod had a pimple on his back two years ago, so Murray uses that as evidence it is clear A-Rod was juicing again. Bacne=steroids.

So now Bob Klapisch is using his medical license and psychiatry degree to diagnose A-Rod as a drug addict. He's a fraud, cheat, liar, self-obsessed and now a drug addict. If A-Rod were an actor, he would be revered, but he's an athlete so he is hated.

Rodriguez may look like a bruiser, but don’t be fooled. He’s nothing without his syringes and pills and creams. He can’t compete without them.

Stomp that body Klapisch! It's still got some life in it! Kick it harder, make sure your moral grandstanding really sticks in the mind of your readers this time!

Just wait and see, A-Rod will find a doctor to say he’s medically unable to keep playing, like Albert Belle, whose own career ended in 2000 because of hip problems. This convenient detour will allow A-Rod to pocket the rest of his money and give the Yankees 85 percent reimbursement from their insurers.

So after calling A-Rod a drug addict based on no evidence this statement is true, Bob Klapisch states A-Rod will probably now commit medical fraud. You would think A-Rod was a master criminal and not just a baseball player who keeps getting linked to steroid use. I'm guessing the next part of Klapisch's argument will be that if A-Rod can't pocket the rest of his money from his contract, he will rob a bank or defraud a little old lady out of her Social Security. Because that's just like something A-Rod would do.

Dishonest or not, it would be the ultimate face-saver, and don’t think for a minute Yankee elders aren’t praying for this very road map.

So the solution to this problem in Bob Klapisch's mind is to commit medical fraud. Of course that's the answer. I personally see no reason why Rodriguez shouldn't just commit medical fraud. In fact, let's encourage him to do this so we can all move on with our lives. Medical fraud is the only obvious solution to this problem.

A-Rod was listed among its clientele. The government will eventually learn if the published claims are verifiable, whether A-Rod was trafficking in controlled or illegal substances.

Wait, so we don't know A-Rod is guilty of using PED's again? It certainly seems like Bob Klapisch knows since he has called A-Rod a drug addict and stated he should consider medical fraud. Rodriguez probably did use PED's again, but Bob Klapisch won't allow any unverified proof to move him away from this conclusion.

There’s no hard proof — yet. But we all see the scaffolding of A-Rod’s cheating heart.

Proof is for people who don't have a deadline. Proof is something that isn't required when doing a hit-job on Alex Rodriguez. He sucks, so let's just keep piling on.

Somehow, A-Rod’s insecurity managed to overwhelm him — a need to be loved, to be hailed, which required a shot of steroids, a dab of HGH, something, anything to compensate for his neurotic fear of being ignored.

Bob Klapisch: Psychiatrist, medical doctor, sportswriter, and now psychologist. His talents know no human bounds.

But here’s the more compelling question: What happened to Rodriguez’s talent if he was indeed juicing and cheating his way through the 2012 season? He finished with his lowest slugging percentage since 1995 and, with only 18 home runs, turned a pursuit of Barry Bonds’ all-time home run record into a dead crawl.

What happened to A-Rod's talent is that he was injured and getting old. It's an easy answer. A-Rod isn't exactly young and he wasn't very good even when he was using PED's at the age of 37.

Only he understands the depth of his desperation — to keep cheating after having been caught once already. To keep cheating after knowing the game’s culture had so radically turned against the juicers. To keep cheating when there was so much to lose: money, health, legacy.

Right, like anyone in the media has forgotten about him having admitted to using PED's during his time with the Texas Rangers. A-Rod had nothing to lose because he has all the money he will need, he obviously doesn't care about his health in the first place and his legacy was shot the first time he admitted to using PED's. Writers like Bob Klapisch or Mike Lupica were never going to forgive and forget Rodriguez's PED use when it came time for A-Rod to be up for Hall of Fame induction. A-Rod's legacy was already shot.

It’s a sad tale of greed and fear, one that cannot end well. Our guess? The arc of Rodriguez’s career is already crashed and burned.

Yes, but this arc was already crashed and burned because he had admitted to prior PED use. The media has him as a cheating PED user who is overpaid and chokes in clutch situations. Much of that is true, but it also explains why he would do what he can to get some sense of a legacy together in the later stages of his career. Bob Klapisch is adding in to A-Rod's legacy that he is a drug addict and suggests he commit medical fraud.

If so, he’ll be remembered by a damning footnote: king of the cheaters.

He was already considered king of the cheaters before he was busted for PED use the second time. Bob Klapisch shouldn't pretend A-Rod's legacy has been forever tainted now. He was already the king of the cheaters in the minds of many.

Now Mike Lupica is going to lean forward in his chair and angrily stomp on Rodriguez while he is down. Hey, it beats having to think of a column idea. Mike Lupica wants us to know that the Yankees are very, very happy to get rid of A-Rod, though I would bet Mike Lupica is sad. It's going to be hard for him to get on his moral high horse when talking about how great Robinson Cano is playing or when discussing Mariano Rivera's career.

Nearly nine years after the Yankees made a trade for Alex Rodriguez that was going to start winning them World Series the way they won them after Joe Torre got to town, the Yankees want Rodriguez to disappear the way the old Stadium has.

The Yankees did win a World Series after trading for A-Rod, though they didn't win four of them. I know this is a source of much shame for Yankees fans everywhere that the self-proclaimed greatest franchise in the history of franchises hasn't won 20 World Series over the past decade, but this is the reality of this tragic situation. 

The Yankees look at a guy who people once thought might end up the greatest player of all time as their Eddy Curry. Not overweight the way Curry was. Just dead weight.

Future journalism students out there, this is not how to write a column. Don't take the most absurd comparison you can think of and then make that comparison. I can't take this column seriously when Alex Rodriguez gets compared to Eddy Curry. Lupica tries to hard to write hyperbole, and he has done that, ruining any good points he might have made with a more apt comparison. 

It is still early in the game with Rodriguez, you have to know that.

Yeah Mike, we know that. This is why we aren't writing an entire column on how terrible Alex Rodriguez is and beginning this column off with an ill-advised Eddy Curry comparison. YOU are the one who needs to know it is still early in the game with Rodriguez. 

Or — this appears to be even more of a longshot — they want the commissioner of baseball, Bud Selig, to hit him with a drug suspension so they can start exploring ways to void his contract, even though the Major League Baseball Players Association will fight to protect guaranteed money in baseball the way gun nuts protect their guns.

Leave to an expert like Mike Lupica to weave in a relevant cultural reference. The MLBPA is going to protect A-Rod like gun nuts protect their guns. It's relevant to mock gun nuts right now and the MLBPA is just like a bunch of gun nuts when trying to protect the members of their union. I'm not sure if there was a way for Mike Lupica to make any more bad comparisons in this column, but at this point I'm ready for anything. 

But if none of that happens, then what?

If the gun nuts don't protect their guns, what will happen? Obama will have won, naturally. 

They keep Rodriguez around as a $114 million scrub?

I would bet Mike Lupica worked hard to work an "Eddy Curry as a gun nut" comparison into this sentence about A-Rod being a $114 million scrub. It's a shame it didn't work out.

a player who was supposed to be on his way to Monument Park when the Yankees traded for him in the middle of February in 2004 has now become a monument to everything performance-enhancing drugs have done to star baseball players

I see what you did there! A-Rod was supposed to be on his way to Monument Park, but now he's a monument to the harm PED's have done to players from the Steroid Era. It's a lot like the Yankees traded for A-Rod in 2004 so he could hit home runs, but now that he has been exposed as a PED user they would rather he run home. 

This is how you punch a ticket to Lance Armstrong-ville.

Abso-fucking-lutely not. A-Rod is about 2000 miles away from Lance Armstrong-ville. Lance Armstrong cheated, then bullied and sued his way into showing just how innocent and clean he truly was. A-Rod hurt very few people other than himself, while Lance Armstrong sullied the name of innocent people who tried to call him out on the bullshit he was peddling. He won a $500,000 libel suit against an English newspaper for writing an article that ended up being accurate. A-Rod is a dipshit, but he is going to have to start ruining some lives before he even gets close to punching a ticket to Lance Armstrong-ville. 

To the end, Armstrong was telling Oprah and the world that he used drugs in the old days, but hasn’t used them lately. Rodriguez is now denying he belongs on Bosch’s list.

They are still two different kind of cheaters in how they treated others while denying they cheated. If Mike Lupica can't see this, then that's on him. A-Rod is to blame for a lot of things, but he isn't the asshole Lance Armstrong is when it comes to ruining another person's good name to protect his own damaged name. 

There is no way of knowing how this plays out, no way of knowing if Rodriguez will be content to cash checks — for five more years — as a part-time DH and pinch-hitter and full-time Eddy Curry payroll albatross.

I think in knowing the kind of competitor that A-Rod is, he is going to find a way to use PED's again and come back to be a contributing member of the Yankees team. 

Think about where they are with Alex Rodriguez now and where they were when they made the trade for him in 2004 because Aaron Boone, the hero of Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series, ripped up his knee in an offseason basketball game and the Yankees found themselves needing a third baseman, and fast.

The Yankees traded for A-Rod in February. They needed a third baseman fast, but they still had a few weeks. It's not like position players need to learn plays or need time to gel with their teammates. Players get traded every year on July 31 and are playing for their new team within a day or two. My point? Mike Lupica is exaggerating (again) when he says the Yankees needed one fast. They mostly needed to just find one in a timely fashion. 

A-Rod, who had always been a shortstop, agreed to make the switch from short to third.

Which, honestly, I don't think he ever got enough credit for this. Michael Young is treated like a deity for switching positions when the Rangers find a superior player to him at his old position. A-Rod was the superior player to Derek Jeter, including defensively, and he agreed to switch positions so Jeter could stay at shortstop. I don't think A-Rod should be treated like a deity, but I'm not sure he gets enough credit for swallowing his ego and pride to share the spotlight and move positions for the sake of Jeter. 

This is what they were saying in the middle of February that year:

“I really cannot describe how happy I am to have been able to acquire a player of the caliber of Alex Rodriguez,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said. “It was perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I am ecstatic that a lot of hard work enabled us to consummate a deal of this magnitude.”

And it was a good opportunity. The results were very, very good. A-Rod (PED-enabled or not) won two MVP awards and was one of the best baseball players in the majors his first five years in New York. It worked out for the Yankees, regardless of whether Mike Lupica believes it did or not. The Yankees didn't win as many World Series as they would have liked of course and that is all Alex Rodriguez's fault. 

Everybody was happy. Why not? The Yankees thought they were getting the best player in baseball, one in the middle of his prime, they had even gotten the Rangers to pay nearly $70 million of his contract.

And I can't emphasize this enough, the Yankees DID get the player they thought they were getting. Don't start writing a revisionist history because you think A-Rod continued to use PED's and he was a disappointment to you. A-Rod was very, very good for the first 5-6 years with the Yankees and then was just pretty good after that once he hit his mid-30's. Blame the Yankees for giving him that huge, new contract, but A-Rod held up his part of the bargain after his trade from the Rangers. He still put up great numbers for the Yankees, and even if it turns out he used PED's during much of that time, the Yankees benefited from his use of PED's. 

Mike Lupica is trying to make it seem like A-Rod didn't live up to his end of the bargain and this isn't true. He averaged 38 home runs, 120 RBI, .296/.392/.557 from 2004-2010. He held up his end of the deal. 

Maybe we should have paid closer attention to that, how the Rangers didn’t just want to get rid of Alex Rodriguez, they were willing to pay the Yankees big money to get out from under the last seven years of the $252 million contract they had given Rodriguez when he had left the Seattle Mariners.

Mike Lupica is such a dipshit. He's taking the new PED allegations directed towards A-Rod and trying to pretend like A-Rod didn't hit the ball well for the Yankees after being traded from Texas. He can't have it both ways. He can't bitch that A-Rod is a fraud who tricked us all into believing he was a great player and also bitch that A-Rod didn't perform. It's a lie. A-Rod played very well during the majority of his original $252 million contract and he shouldn't be blamed for accepting a ludicrous contract extension no player in his right mind would have turned down. 

Only now they all want to do anything and everything to make sure that he never puts the uniform on again. Nine years after the Rangers punched Alex Rodriguez’s ticket out of Arlington, Tex., the Yankees want to do the exact same thing with him in New York.

This is true, but this is a reflection of A-Rod's current performance, not a reflection of his past regular season performances. 

That is the dream at Yankee Stadium, where they want Alex Rodriguez to go away. But the nightmare for the Yankees is that he might not be going anywhere.

Who caused that nightmare? The Yankees did. A-Rod may be a cheater and a fraud, but the Yankees benefited from his cheating and fraudulent activity. It's also ridiculous to blame him for the contract extension he signed. He didn't force the Yankees to offer him that contract. At least blame him for the things that are his fault, there's a good list of options to choose from on that front.