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.

Life on the DL

You learn a thing or two when you’re on the DL. For one, you discover just how appealing a diet of water and bagel chips can be. You also learn what color the hair on your beard is these days (for me, a mixture of brown, red and – gulp – gray). On a more serious note, you’re reminded of just how important it is to have health care.

My trip to the disabled list was prompted by a delightful sinus infection/influenza cocktail. It kept me out of work for a week, landed me in the Hynes Sick Room, and left me with little to do except hold my forehead, pull the covers close, and, drink my fluids.

So many of us look around our homes and say, “If I just had a few more days off, I could get so much done around here.” Sick days grant us that extra time, but of course the irony is that we have no energy at all to get anything done except refill the humidifier and take our medicine. We’re left, instead, to accept the reality that life’s gotta slow down when you’re on the DL.

So, when the fever has dipped closer to normal, we turn on the TV and absorb whatever our senses can take in. I remember seeing a lot of Weather Channel reporters in Washington, D.C., standing knee-deep in snow with rulers in hand. I recall hearing the play-by-play from some dismal basketball games featuring the New York Knicks and New Jersey Nets. I watched some of the soap opera now known as “The Damons of Our Lives,” as MLB Network commentators tried to determine just which team Johnny Damon will play left field for this year. (Please, Johnny, enough is enough!)

I learned that Henry Louis Gates Jr. is teaching us some cool lessons about our ancestries on PBS by researching the family trees of celebrities. I found out that Bob Dylan, Jennifer Hudson and Smokey Robinson can actually team up for a pretty cool concert, especially if that concert is held in the White House. And I even learned that there is a television station devoted to showing music videos of songs from movie soundtracks. And you thought Kenny Loggins’ career was over!

There comes a point where you feel your body turning a corner, and you’re ready for something more than channel surfing. So you pick up a newspaper or a magazine. You try and figure out just what’s happening in Iran right now, and you learn about the courage so many Iranian journalists have shown in recent months. You read about some of the creative ways that people are raising money for Haiti. You finally get to Gary Smith’s Sports Illustrated article about a South African man and his journey from living in a semi-pro team’s clubhouse to playing minor-league ball for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

You have time to read that Times Magazine story about the Obamas’ marriage. You take a few minutes to learn the back story of Lady Gaga. You steel yourself for Nicholas Kristof’s sobering columns about the war in Congo. You absorb some Winter Olympics preview stories, and learn what you need to know about Shani Davis and Lindsey Vonn.

When you’re feeling well enough to lengthen your attention span, you start reading Luckiest Man, a biography of Lou Gehrig. You learn about the extreme poverty in the childhood of this man who would become one of baseball’s greatest players. You find yourself reading not so much the story of a ballplayer, but a tale of the immense obstacles and extreme determination present in the lives of American immigrants 100 years ago.

The bagel chips get old eventually, and you’re ready for a bowl of cereal, maybe even a glass of orange juice. The bones stop aching so much, and the head pounds a little less. You’re working your way off the DL. The doctor says to avoid rushing back to full speed.

You get back to work, and that feels good after so many days in bed. You didn’t get anything done around the house – in fact, the place is messier now than it was before. But in pulling back from business as usual, you had the chance to nourish your mind with stories it wouldn’t have had time for otherwise. And if knowledge equals power, then you’re feeling rather strong indeed.