Think back to 2009.
Now, visualize Alex Rodriguez at the plate.
Do you think there’s any chance he’s making an out? Does he?
Seven years later, the whole blur, beginning to end, is more remarkable in retrospect than it even was while it was occurring. This was Alex Rodriguez, a man whose reputation was literally that during moments of great import, he’d turn his own bat to sawdust with his clenched, nervous fists.
But in 2009, he absolutely knew he was launching every ball he liked a long, long way. If he didn’t hit it into the stratosphere, it simply meant he wasn’t given the opportunity. 3-1 curveball away? Fine, I’ll spit on it and walk if I have to. Otherwise, I’m breaking your season.
Most of our great postseason memories, rose-colored in retrospect, are of juggernaut offenses, with every player contributing to make championship dreams a reality. But in 2009, that wasn’t the case at all.
The 2009 Yankees were one of the most spectacular offenses of the modern era…during the regular season. Once October rolled around, the unit as a whole reverted to a postseason reality; things get tempered a bit. Generally, you need one or two men to absolutely catch fire and carry the roster out of times of offensive turmoil. In 2009, it was pretty much all thanks to Hideki Matsui and Alex Rodriguez.
Mark Teixeira lost his way (.167, .222, .136 in the three postseason rounds). Nick Swisher was less valuable than a bat taped to a gourd (.083, .150, .133). Melky Cabrera, despite a white-hot ALCS, took the other two rounds off.
Legitimately, whenever necessary, Alex Rodriguez was there.
It was from all the way back in Game 1 of the ALDS. Game 1 of the whole damn run. The symbolism was obvious. Ninth-grade short story obvious. A-Rod, carrying an 0-29 with runners on base in the postseason, dating back to the 2004 ALCS, rapped a two-out RBI single for the Yanks’ fourth run of the game, and knocked in another in the seventh. He was literally saying, “Remember 2004? The worst moment of your lives? Yeah. I don’t know what I was doing then, or since then. But this is me now.”
In Game 2, down two runs in the ninth, and following a Mark Teixeira single down the right field line, Rod got a Joe Nathan fastball on the outer half of the plate and absolutely demolished it into Mike Harkey’s waiting arms. Tie game. Consider your postseason, crashed.
For me, it’s the defining A-Rod swing. What we’d been waiting for for what felt like a generation, but in actuality was just my time in high school. Of course, the spotlight always found A-Rod in the postseason. And during the regular season, these moments felt built for him. Down three in the ninth against Baltimore in 2007, a walk-off grand slam to the black seats. Yeah. That’s what a behemoth like Alex Rodriguez should do. David Ortiz. Miguel Cabrera. Some players are behemoths, and they behave thusly.
But once the postseason spotlight found A-Rod, he behaved differently. The only playoff homer I can actively remember after 2004 and before 2009 was against Joe Borowski in a pathetic Game 4 against Cleveland, started by an impotent Chien-Ming Wang. Too little, too late. Opposing fans loved to boo and jeer him when he didn’t come through. But Yankee fans knew he rarely came through. The failure was the norm. Why boo the projected outcome?
But in 2009, there he was. Behemoth-Rod. The Nathan bomb. The homer into the baggie off Carl Pavano the very next day that made me smirk and him shiver. The similar equalizer against a rain-soaked Brian Fuentes in Game 2 of the ALCS. Just a lefty spinning a pitch right where he wanted it, A-Rod basically spitting out the phrase, “I’m A-Rod” as he connected.
The rest of the bombs against the Angels. The first-ever replay review, the homer off the Philadelphia camera that flipped that Game 3. The two-out double in the ninth in Game 4! Man, that one, too!
To remember the 2009 season and World Series without properly acknowledging A-Rod is foolhardy and revisionist. And you’re not just allowed to acknowledge A-Rod. You have to praise him. Because he went above and beyond, and he unequivocally deserves it.
Alex Rodriguez’s 2009 postseason wasn’t just an argument that refuted his previous critics. It was the single best individual postseason anyone has ever seen. And he did it for us.
