The Age of A-Rod: A Rambling, Borderline Incomprehensible Look at Steroids, Postmodernism, and the Fonz
“The symbol of his age”: I can’t help but think that, of all the sentiments that get repeated about A-Rod, that’s the one that’s gonna stick. He wasn’t the 30 year-old slugger trying to jack a few more (McGwire), the all-century player envying the attention being showered on homer-happy lesser lights (Bonds), or the psychopathically competitive pitcher unwilling to accept natural decline (Clemens). He had every gift a ballplayer could want, he had all the money and attention a human being could want, he probably would have hit 800 homers and won 4 MVPs without ‘roids. You can psychoanalyze A-Rod forever — he needs to be loved, he felt the burden of his contract, whatever — but the fact is: he didn’t need to take steroids, but, like every baseball player at that time, he had every incentive to take them, so he did anyway. It was the thing to do.
And I think that’s part of why the whole “symbol of his age” thing is so apt: A-Rod’s steroid dilemma wasn’t some epic human drama like the other greats; it just seems so ordinary. And here’s the thing about that: despite all the feigned outrage sportswriters are spewing out, I really don’t care. A-Rod has always been the symbol of his age to me, and it’s precisely because I’m so indifferent to him.
Great as he is, A-Rod’s not quite as good hitter as Manny — but Manny B. Manny Ramirez, Esq. is too idiosyncratic to stand in for anything other than Manny. Despite playing a less valuable defensive position than A-Rod, Albert Pujols is the best ballplayer alive right now (did you realize that he’s never had an OPS+ below 150?), but he came into the league at the tail-end of the steroid age, and besides, he’s too boring for anyone outside the Midwest to care. (Good Lord, though: as a Cubs fan, few things terrify me as much as the sight of that coiled-cobra batting stance.) Barry Bonds is an anomaly, a bulging monstrosity, an outlier — the extreme of the age but not its representative symbol. But A-Rod? He’s at the center of everything: playing in the biggest market, signing the biggest contract, chasing the biggest record. He may not be the best player of this era, but he’s certainly the biggest, and so the one who lends it some definition.
Babe Ruth, with his big swagger and bigger stick, defined baseball in the 20s. Ted Williams, the consummate professional running the bases with his head down and refusing to tip his cap, defined baseball in the 40s. The transition from Hank Aaron — one of eight children, who picked cotton growing up and learned to play ball by hitting bottle caps with a stick — to Reggie Jackson — the fast-talking mega-star who shined the most under the brightest lights — defined baseball in the 70s. Alex Rodriguez, for better or for worse, defines baseball today. But what defines A-Rod, exactly?
He’s the center, but he’s an empty center. He sleeps with the blondes — Madonna, Kate Hudson, that one stripper — but it doesn’t seem illicit, or passionate, or anything else, really — just what the good-looking, multimillionaire, biggest baseball superstar of his era is supposed to do. He works as hard as anybody, but it’s tough to think of him as the gritty, Chase Utley type of superstar; it’s just another thing he does because he’s supposed to, because it’s expected of him. He apologizes when he gets caught with steroids, but it feels about as real as his orange tan — it’s what you’re supposed to do when you get caught doing something wrong. That’s A-Rod: always going along with what he’s supposed to do, always playing the role prescribed for him. I can see why the new nickname A-Fraud might stick, but it doesn’t quite seem to capture it: A-Rod plays the role, but there doesn’t seem to be anything else behind it; the role is all there is.
That’s why A-Rod is the symbol of his age to me. As is so often the case, baseball correlates to the nation at large, and the symbol of each baseball era seems to speak to the corresponding cultural era. The Sultan of Swat and the Jazz Age; Theodore Ballgame and the Greatest Generation; Hammerin’ Hank and the Civil Rights era; Mr. October and Disco — they all just fit so well. And A-Rod fits this one.
Frederic James says that postmodernism, the cultural logic of late or multinational capitalism, is characterized by the waning of affect, of deep feeling, and also by the effacement of the depth model more generally — erasing the distinction between inside and outside, essence and appearance, that which is latent and that which is manifest, authenticity and inauthenticity, signifier and signified. That’s A-Rod to me — not someone with a rich inside we’re unable to see, but someone who is nothing other than the flat figure before us. He’s infinitely mediated, a simulacrum, a copy for which no original ever existed. He’s the ultimate postmodern ballplayer. And I don’t feel anything about him.
But then I think about my favorite player, Alfonso Soriano. He’s a good player — career OPS+ of 116 — but he’s certainly not a Hall of Famer, and in fact, he’s not even the best position player on the Cubs (Aramis Ramirez and Geovany Soto are better). During his hot streaks, he’s like no Cubbie I’ve ever seen, carrying the team on his back, crushing just about everything — the first pitch of the game, an eigth-inning heater, a changeup at the shins, it doesn’t matter. But when he’s struggling, as he has the past two postseasons, he looks awful up there, with his crouched stance, overly wristy swing, and big-barreled bat flailing at breaking balls in the left-handed batter’s box. He’s one of the better left fielders in baseball (though when you’re being compared to the likes of Big Donkey Dunn and Pre-Maturely Middle-Aged Raul Ibanez, that’s not saying a ton), he guns guys down at the plate like nobody’s business, but he takes inexplicably bad routes and will miss routine flies at the worst possible time (twice in the 9th inning of close games on the road last year — once in St. Louis, once in Pittsburgh).
He likes the attention he gets. I think of Fonzie at the All-Star Game in San Fran two years ago, rocking some serious bling in his ears, taking JJ Putz oppo in the bottom of the ninth to start the NL’s abortive two-out rally. (That was the game, for those with short memories, when Tony LaRussa left Albert Pujols — Albert Pujols! — on the bench while Aaron “I look like a constipated porn star in the batter’s box” Rowand made the last out.) He needs the attention and the love, really, but unlike A-Rod, it’s not something you just say with him; it’s something you see. When he’s in the cold streaks and the Wrigley faithful are booing him, he can’t hide the hurt from his face. When he puts one out on Waveland, you see him flash those million-dollar teeth heading to first, and then he pops out of the dugout like no one else, barely able to wait for the curtain call. If you ever go to a game at Wrigley, watch him in left field: he’s always turning around, talking and signaling to the fans, loving the closeness, making you feel like you really connect to this athlete who drives a customized Hummer, wears diamond-studded earrings, and has a $136 million contract.
But isn’t that just right, after all? He makes you understand why they call Wrigley Field the Friendly Confines, you feel like this — a sunny summer afternoon, Old Style beer in hand, ivy growing on the bricks, hand-operated scoreboard above, vibrant community outside — is what baseball once was, but you also know that it’s a sort of pastiche, a commodified version of the 19th-century pastoral game, that the iconic stadium itself is a multimillion dollar investment commodified to the end. The bleacher bums are still there, but they now sit in the Bud Light Bleachers.
But I’ll take that. Alfonso Soriano, with his hot streaks and his cold streaks, his always reliable arm and his sometimes suspect glove, his genuine emotional connection with the fans and his superstar physical distance, is my favorite baseball player. Is A-Rod anyone’s favorite player? Does anyone genuinely love him? We can’t escape all the shit that comes with baseball in the postmodern age — it’s all spectacle, after all, and spectacle is commodification at its purest — but we can at least find ways to embrace it. Fonzie is full of contradictions. I don’t know if his affection for the fans is genuine. I don’t know if genuine even has any relevance. But unlike A-Rod, he at least makes you feel that there’s still a connection, that maybe reveling in this shit itsn’t so bad, after all. I can deal with that.
