Like a kid avoiding a trip to the dentist, Alex Rodriguez reluctantly made his way over to pretend to kiss and make up with Los Angeles Dodgers manager Joe Torre.
Come to think of it, ARod would probably rather sit through a root canal than interact with Torre at all. But he knew how the lack of contact or pleasantries with his former manager was playing in the tabloids so he reluctantly walked over when Torre was supervising batting practice on Sunday.
Torre and ARod said nice things about each other all weekend, with the manager even saying that he would have welcomed the third baseman to the Dodgers if he had fully explored free agency when opting out of his original 10-year deal in late 2007, which I find pretty hard to believe given Torre’s obvious frustration in managing him during his Yankees tenure.
But for the New York Yankees media staff, getting ARod to talk directly to Torre was probably like pulling teeth. It's obvious from ARod's post-chat comments that even this brief encounter was painful for him, calling it the mature and gentlemanly thing to do rather than saying all is forgiven. So the greeting was little more than a weak attempt to pretend to bury the hatchet.
The ARod/Torre stories will now fade since the Yankees left Los Angeles and likely won't see the Dodgers again this year. But it's clear that ARod is still pretty hurt by his Torre experience and no transparently fake reconciliation is going to change that.
Come to think of it, ARod would probably rather sit through a root canal than interact with Torre at all. But he knew how the lack of contact or pleasantries with his former manager was playing in the tabloids so he reluctantly walked over when Torre was supervising batting practice on Sunday.
Torre and ARod said nice things about each other all weekend, with the manager even saying that he would have welcomed the third baseman to the Dodgers if he had fully explored free agency when opting out of his original 10-year deal in late 2007, which I find pretty hard to believe given Torre’s obvious frustration in managing him during his Yankees tenure.
But for the New York Yankees media staff, getting ARod to talk directly to Torre was probably like pulling teeth. It's obvious from ARod's post-chat comments that even this brief encounter was painful for him, calling it the mature and gentlemanly thing to do rather than saying all is forgiven. So the greeting was little more than a weak attempt to pretend to bury the hatchet.
The ARod/Torre stories will now fade since the Yankees left Los Angeles and likely won't see the Dodgers again this year. But it's clear that ARod is still pretty hurt by his Torre experience and no transparently fake reconciliation is going to change that.
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