A-Rod Gaga (One Sixty-Two: Day 101)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred-One: Alex Rodriguez, New York Yankees

In last Sunday’s New York Times, Jon Caramanica wrote a thoughtful essay on the proliferation of spectacle in modern women’s pop music. The essay, titled “Pure Gaga,” contrasts the ubiquitous Lady Gaga of 2010 with the equally popular Madonna of the 1980s and ‘90s. While both singers loved to dress up and shake up pop society, Caramanica writes that there is a difference: Madonna, he says, “was a savvy pop trickster, using outrageous imagery as a distraction while smuggling ideas about religion and social politics into her music.” In contrast, he writes, Lady Gaga and her contemporaries are “interested in distraction as an end in itself.”

I happen to enjoy Lady Gaga’s music, but I, too, am waiting to see if there’s any substance behind the Mardi Gras outfits. Is Gaga going to use the images in her videos to deliver messages that push the boundaries of society in exciting, progressive ways? Or will she focus first and foremost on creating just enough dazzle to impact the Billboard charts, without an attempt at using her status to make us think?

The great ones always give us more than the art. The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Marvin Gaye, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley – all took the initiative to bring thoughtful ideas into their music. It’s the same way with athletes. There have been thousands of brilliant athletes in the history of sports, but the truly great ones used their popularity as an opportunity to speak out or act out on issues extending beyond the sports arena – Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, Jim Brown, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Martina Navratilova, to name a few.

The coverage in New York this past week has focused around the pending 600th home run of Alex Rodriguez. The Yankees’ third baseman will eventually hit his 600th homer, although it’s taking awhile. A few years after that, he will hit his 700th, and perhaps a few years later he’ll break all the records en route to No. 800. That will be interesting to see.

But it won’t bring tears to the eyes of this writer. I am always fascinated by the magnificence of Rodriguez’s skills. But there are a lot of magnificent athletes out there. What brings you to your knees is watching an athlete combine his or her talents with a thoughtful entry into society’s conversations. It’s one thing to help build a three-run lead; it’s quite another to help build a better world. When Curtis Granderson belts a home run in Yankee Stadium, I watch him round the bases with the knowledge that he is also using his success and notoriety to benefit the lives of young people throughout the nation through his own community-service activities.

So I will watch Alex Rodriguez’s 600th home run when it happens, and it will be nice to see him smile about it. But I am still waiting, patiently, to see if there’s more to Alex Rodriguez than the long fly balls and the throws to first base. I’m looking for more to A-Rod than a splash of Gaga. The clock is ticking.