A-Rod transformation

NEW YORK -- Let's go back to February, when Alex Rodriguez summoned a few hundred of his closest reporter friends and cameramen, announcing to the baseball world: "I screwed up, big-time."
Read between the soccer jerseys lines. What Burnett was saying was, when A-Rod came clean on his steroid use -- not so long after the pictures of he and the girl in the Toronto hotel had triggered a divorce -- the people inside the clubhouses around Major League Baseball saw an Alex Rodriguez they had never seen before.
To really understand the transformation of A-Rod into a guy who now kneels on the top step of the dugout -- who doesn't swing at bad pitches; who offers encouragement and base-running advice to teammates now on a nightly basis -- you have to go back to that day in February.
It started as all true transformations do. At its lowest point.
It never works, of course. In fact, only a prodigious talent like this one could keep the balls in the air for as long as Rodriguez did before they all hit the ground this past spring.
"The last 15 months have been very, very tough," he admitted that spring day in Tampa. "I mean, I've been through divorce, I've been through the tabloids, you name it.
He admitted to three years of steroid use. He was shameful about losing his marriage in a tawdry, tabloid way. But at least, unlike the Mark McGwires, Sammy Sosas and Barry Bonds', A-Rod took all the blame, saying to himself what we would all say to him, if he were our son or brother:
It was time, Alex Rodriguez admitted, "to look in the mirror."
"I saw him at that press conference. He was humbled," New York's Game 2 starter A.J. Burnett said on Tuesday. "He looked like he knew it was his time to turn it around and make a change."
"I think there's a tremendous opportunity for me to look in the mirror, be a better teammate … a better player to my fans, a better human being."
As a journalist these soul-searching epiphanies become like draft day. You can't tell if a scout is any good until a few years down the road, and you couldn't take A-Rod at face value until he had a season of righteous living under his belt, so to speak.
It started with even more adversity. A hip injury that required surgery and delayed his first game until May 8.
Time to think. To take stock on what had come out of his mouth down in Tampa, and not be like so many athletes who talk a big game, but revert to being a me-first player once the games begin again.
"Coming in from (surgery in) Colorado this year, I took inventory," he said on the eve of the first World Series game of a 16-year career. "I knew I couldn't change a lot of the mistakes I've made off the field, or my shortcomings on the field, whether it was in October or the regular season. I knew I had an opportunity, with nine years ahead of me (on his contract), to do things right both on and off the field.
"Surround myself with good people, starting with my teammates. Enjoy my teammates. Surround myself with good people off the field."

Stop big-timing everyone. Cheer on a teammate. Forget about what they're paying you -- and what the papers are saying -- and take one for the team once in a while.
"That's been the biggest difference for me. Just being able to trust all my teammates," he said. "Knowing that, if they walk me, more likely than not I'm going to score a run. I can steal a base, score on a double with two outs… Really, just swing at strikes.
"Looking back, I probably was overanxious. Trying to do too much. We have a complete team, we have good pitching, and no one guy has to do too much."
His first ever post-season sacrifice fly came this season.
Coincidence? Perhaps.
It is funny how one of the greatest ball players of our day has to remember how to be a ball player again before he can have the type of post-season we always thought A-Rod should have. The highest paid player in baseball at $33 million is also the best player this post-season, hitting .438 with five homers, 12 RBIs, and a hit in every post-season Yankees game.
"I've definitely rediscovered the joy of playing baseball again, that's for sure," he said.
It's amazing what can happen when a great player becomes a great teammate.
"In spring training I hit rock bottom," Rodriguez said on Tuesday. "You can only hit your head against the wall so many times before you figure out there's another way to get to the other side. Some of us, it has taken a little longer (to figure that out)."
This is a guy who used to be all about himself. A guy who did not hang with teammates; for whom there was a limo waiting outside the stadium every night, very likely a new girl(s) inside, and a bunch of people who fed his image of who he thought the highest paid player in the game should be.