People outside the Yankees’ clubhouse often dismiss the notion with an eye roll or a punch line:
That Alex Rodriguez is a good teammate and, more specifically, a mentor to younger players.
But talking to Yankees veterans and up-and-coming players alike, on or off the record, there is no such reaction.
Make no mistake, the bountiful off-the-field issues Rodriguez has had, including a season-long suspension in 2014, are just as known inside the clubhouse as outside it. But players are black-and-white when it comes to such things: In the clubhouse, you’re either a positive or a negative, a good teammate or a not-so-good one.
And as Mark Teixeira, set to retire at season’s end, put it: “We’re going to miss Alex in this clubhouse.”
There’s Didi Gregorius, who struggled in the first month of the 2015 season after taking over for franchise icon Derek Jeter. One afternoon in that first month, shortly after he arrived at the Stadium, Rodriguez stopped by his locker and suggested picking a date when he might work with the shortstop.
“He has a lot of experience under his belt and if you don’t want to learn, you’ll never learn,” Gregorius said. “He took me out there to take ground balls, [talked] about the league, getting to know the runners. Be prepared every day. That always stuck in my head.”
Or CC Sabathia, who came to the Yankees before the 2009 season already with a fairly solid resume, which included a Cy Young Award, but still had trepidations about fitting in. He felt immediately welcomed by the slugger.
“A great teammate,” Sabathia said. “He’s always been nothing but helpful to me since I’ve been here. I can’t speak before that, but he’s always been fantastic with me and just helping every aspect of the game. His baseball mind is unbelievable, so I think that’s why he’ll do well as an assistant to Hal.”
On Sunday the Yankees announced Rodriguez would be unconditionally released after Friday night’s home game against the Rays, then sign a contract with the team as “a special adviser and instructor,” reporting directly to managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner.
While the Yankees don’t want Rodriguez on their 25-man roster anymore, they do want him working with their young players, something he’s been doing unofficially in recent years anyway.
It was not unusual to see the bilingual Rodriguez holding court with small groups of them during spring training, particularly Latin players who speak little English and need help adjusting, whether it be baseball related or not.
“We understand a little bit of English but in Spanish you can get more of the advice someone is giving you,” Luis Severino said.
The 22-year-old Severino recalled Rodriguez talking to him last August shortly after the righthander was called up in August and inserted into the heat of a pennant race.
“Every time we’ve talked he’s helped me,” said Severino, who will start Tuesday night at Fenway Park, the first of a three-game series in which it is not clear how many at-bats Rodriguez will get from Joe Girardi. “He helped me a lot about pitching up here, he talked about the importance of pitching up [in the strike zone] in the big leagues.”
Catching prospect Gary Sanchez said Rodriguez has been a mentor to him since his first big-league spring training in 2013.
“He’s always given us good advice, on and off the field, he’s always been there for us, he always has time for us,” Sanchez, through his translator, said. “One thing he has told me is about creating a routine. A routine that I can use to prepare myself for every game.”
Like Sabathia, Brian McCann lauded Rodriguez’s baseball IQ, which he described as “off the charts.”
“He knows so much about the game, from the pitching side to the hitting side to picking up little thing,” McCann said. “It’s incredible, his attention to detail.”
..... - Newsday