WHY ALEX RODRIGUEZ HAS FOUND HIS WAY

I like Alex Rodriguez, but I know a ton of you guys are sick of him personally, his bad contract and his ego. Look, Alex is Alex. At the end of the day, he plays hard but injury and father time has not been kind to him lately. That being said, I was thinking about all the Yankees that have come through the Yankees clubhouse over the years and some really have a great stay in New York, like Nick Swisher for instance. Some though, we shun as soon as they arrive because the bottom line is, they don't show leadership, or they don't understand what it means to be a New York Yankee. It's different in New York. It’s clear to me that the ones that we hate either don’t contribute enough or show absolutely no leadership role like the guys that we’ve grown accustomed to over the years. Jorge Posada, Don Mattingly, Derek Jeter immediately come to mind as leaders... I guess home grown talent goes a long way. They adapt very early. That made me think... I wonder if Alex Rodriguez would be a different guy if he grew up in the Yankees farm system. I believe it would be different today if he had... my opinion of course.

Look back to our recent Yankees...when the Yankees signed Carl Pavano after he hit free agency, I don’t know why, but I expected him to mature and be a leader in the clubhouse during his 4 year contract. After all, a big contract sometimes brings in big responsibility and he was just coming off a nice run with the Marlins. I should have known it would be a total bust. I thought he’d be a leader in the Bronx...I was wrong. I remember Gary Sheffield and after he directly negotiated his deal with Steinbrenner, I expected a leader from Sheffield. Instead, he just acted like he was holier than thou...a dude riding on past accomplishments. That's not a slap at Shef, that's just Shef and I should have known better. Alex Rodriguez unfortunately falls into this category and I am hoping in 2012, he'll be able to turn it around.

Let’s not forget how many of us felt when we traded for Alex Rodriguez... all of Yankeeland rejoiced like we were about to win the World Series that moment. We didn’t and we hammered this guy like he was solely responsible for us not winning. The truth is, while he didn’t provide leadership for our Yankees then, he still put up some decent numbers since he's been in the Bronx. Yes, it's true, the post-season wasn’t kind to Alex for years. Then, in 2009 when he finally did do damage and contributed huge to a Yankees Championship, it seems only then he was about "team". That only then he realized what it meant to be a New York Yankee. That was the beginning for me personally because it was then that I felt like that was the defining moment for Alex. I felt like he finally grew up, like something finally clicked and he knew what his role was at that point. Sure he should have known it all along, but that goes back to my point about homegrown talent. I wonder if he just didn't understand it because he wasn't raised in it.

Sometimes I view Alex as an adult with a child brain. Sounds insulting but all I mean by that is I don’t feel like he truly understood the concept of being and adult...a leader. He does now and if Alex always provided leadership, like for instance he did the other day, when he spoke to his teammates before Friday's game against the University of Florida. According to Eric Chavez, Alex "blew him away." Chavez said: "To get up in front of the whole team, out of your element, he really embraced it. I don’t see myself doing that. I can’t knock down those walls, so to see Al do it, it was like, ‘Wow.’” Read the full New York Daily News story HERE. That energy may have been there long ago but Alex didn't know how to harness it.

It is my opinion, that if Alex didn’t walk into Yankeeland like ARod, but instead Alex, I almost feel like this whole bash fest wouldn’t exist. Sure, Alex has a huge contract to live up to and he'll be a Yankee for a long time, but we all know right now the goal for the Yankees and Alex is to get the All-Time Home Run crown back home in the Bronx as well as win as many World Championships as possible. We all may not like his contract, but we all have to understand the goal. This is about the Yankees and they knew Alex would be the only one to get that record back in New York. Babe Ruth did it, and Alex will do it too.

In the end, Alex is Alex and while he’s maturing in front of our eyes, we probably wished that wouldn’t have been the case. Instead, I’m sure that if he talked more about team, complimented his teammates in a sincere manner and carried himself like Derek Jeter, you’d all love Alex Rodriguez more. Well, maybe, just maybe, getting older, realizing what he has with the Yankees and hell, even dating Torrie Wilson and being happy will open his eyes alittle more. Maybe he’s finally seeing the big picture; lead by example, not lead to better one’s self. If anyone can do it, Alex can, I believe that.

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