ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Now that Derek Jeter is retiring, Alex Rodriguez will finally get his wish — the New York Yankees will be his team now.
As baseball says goodbye to the good king, the evil king still lurks in the shadows — banished and broken, but, from all accounts, expected to return next season.
You can’t tell the story of Derek Jeter without Alex Rodriguez. He was the antagonist brought into the Jeter fairy-tale baseball career in 2004.
It was a fairy-tale life — the star of the Yankees, who, thanks to Jeter, had become the championship franchise that they had been with Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle.
Jeter arrived briefly at shortstop at the end of 1995, and made his presence known the following season, winning Rookie of the Year honors and leading the franchise to the World Series championship — its first since the Reggie Jackson years of 1977-78.
SEE ALSO: Derek Jeter bows out in Boston after 3,465th and final major league hit
He went on to be the core of the Yankees’ soul, with six American League pennants and four World Series titles from 1996 to 2003. He was beloved. He was successful. He was the face of baseball’s postseason. He was much more than his impressive career statistics. He was a champion. He was a Yankee.
And then A-Rod became a Yankee, and it all turned sour. The fairy tale had become a horror story.
A-Rod represented everything that Jeter was not off the field. He was a self-absorbed, disingenuous superstar — and then became known as a liar and a cheat, a baseball leper, suspended for the entire 2014 season for steroid use as part of baseball’s Biogenesis investigation.
His suspension this year was one of the few things that went right for the Yankees since A-Rod arrived. At least he was out of sight during the season-long Jeter celebration. We didn’t have to listen to him pretending to celebrate the greatness of Jeter.
It is no coincidence that the trade that brought A-Rod from the Texas Rangers to the Yankees following the 2003 season changed the fairy tale for two teams — the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.
He was supposed to go to Boston, but the trade was nullified when the Major League Baseball Players Association refused to approve the deal because the restructuring of A-Rod’s contract would have lost too much value.
SEE ALSO: Jordan Zimmermann throws no-hitter vs. Marlins in Nationals’ regular-season finale
Instead, he was traded to the Yankees, and Boston went on to come back from a 3-0 deficit to New York in the 2004 American League Championship Series to win 4 games to 3, and then go on to win one of its three World Series titles since the A-Rod trade.
New York would win one World Series in 2009 with A-Rod on the roster, but he was a passenger on that championship. It was considered the last hurrah of the core group of Yankees — Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada — who, along with Bernie Williams, were the foundation that the success of the franchise had been built on.
This is what Jeter represented — a brief period of player development by the Yankee organization, saved from the dysfunction of George Steinbrenner’s rule thanks to the suspension of the Yankee owner in 1990 for paying a gambler $40,000 to dig up dirt on one of his players, Dave Winfield.
The three years Steinbrenner, who was reckless in trading away young players for veterans, sending the Yankees into a spiral in the 1980s, was banned from baseball resulted in the farm system being able to keep its young stars — like Jeter.
The shortstop came to represent that era of Yankee excellence. He was everything that New York did right.
Then came the A-Rod trade, and he would come to represent the return of the ugly Steinbrenner dysfunction. Just as Jeter marked an era of franchise success, A-Rod represents the era of Yankee failure.
The two superstars existed in a tense atmosphere. They had been friends, but A-Rod’s presence in the clubhouse and the controversy he brought into the room were the antithesis of Jeter, who came to barely tolerate his former friend.
We now say goodbye to Jeter. He was one of the greatest Yankees of all time, leading the franchise in games played, hits and many more categories. He was a 14-time All-Star who will bring the biggest crowd in history to Cooperstown for his Hall of Fame induction five years from now.
Next season, we will welcome back A-Rod, who, at the age of 39 with a broken-down body, may barely be able to play anymore, but who the Yankees still owe $61 million.
With Jeter gone, this will finally be A-Rod’s team. The fairy tale will be over.
• Thom Loverro is co-host of “The Sports Fix,” noon to 2 p.m. daily on ESPN 980 radio and espn980.com.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.