With the news that Alex Rodríguez has an injury that could require up to four months of rehabilitation, should he opt for surgery, the proposals for temporary third base replacements have been coming fast and furious from all corners of the Yankee, and indeed, baseball universe.
Now, while it's important to remember that if Rodríguez opts to go the rest and rehab route that worked oh so well for Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui, he needn't actually miss much, if any time.
The caveat is, however, that Rodríguez's injury will likely need surgery, so, at some point in time, the Yankees will have to address the issue as to who should play third base.
I have a modest proposal, and I beg you all to read it through before thinking holy deity in a handbasket, this girl's insane: The Yankees should trade for Aaron Boone.
Think about it.
After etching himself firmly in Yankee lore for all time to come in 2003 by ensuring Boston one more hard winter of misery, Boone decided to play a pick-up basketball game.
Normally, such things don't matter, except this time Boone did something that wasn't very smart from his perspective: he tore his ACL.
Torn ACLs in the world of sports are ubiquitous, and so are the lost seasons and months of rehabilitation that they entail.
The Yankees knew right away that they'd need a third baseman for the 2004 season.
Someone, and I can't tell you who, aware of the issue, must have shared a thought with the rest of the Yankees management: hey, you know, this Alex Rodríguez guy, I hear he's supposed to be pretty good, and hey, Texas doesn't want to pay the rest of his contract because they aren't winning, and hey, we don't really need Alfonso Soriano anyway...
I'm not sure what said person had been thinking, drinking, or smoking, but lo-and-behold, Alex Rodríguez became a Yankee.
And here their troubles began.
Since Alex Rodríguez became a Yankee:
- The Yankees suffered the biggest postseason choke in all of baseball history and have not been back to the League Championship Series since, and the Red Sox have won the World Series twice in that span
- The issue of steroids in baseball went from a 'dirty-little-open-secret' to full blown Congressional hearings
- Andy Pettitte and Alex Rodríguez have both admitted to juicing/doing HGH/using banned substances; Roger Clemens has sued for libel, but most everyone thinks he's guilty as well.
- The Yankees decided to build a new stadium, which isn't a bad thing until you consider that it's 4,000 seats smaller and has seats with obstructed views
- Joe Torre wrote a book trashing the Yankees
- Bob Sheppard, the legendary PA announcer at Yankee Stadium, missed all of last season due to illness
- The Tampa Rays exorcised the word 'Devil' from their name and stopped being the Yankees' favorite doormat
- Minor one here: The American economy has completely collapsed
So, as you see, there's a little mess that the Yankees have gotten themselves, and heck, most of the free world, into, and they need to get themselves, and the free world, out of it.
In most circumstances, proper decorum as well as coming-of-age stories all tell us that if you get someone or something into a mess, you have to get the said someone or something out of said mess.
Aaron Boone got the Yankees into their mess. It'd be nice of him to get them out of it.
