Wings on Pigs, Icicles in Hell, A-Rod a World Series Hero ... Yet Again

PHILADELPHIA -- If the Phillies were trying to get into Alex Rodriguez's head by hitting him with pitches, they're going to need to find another tactic, and fast. Something very strange has happened here in late 2009, and the inside of that particular head is no longer the mushy, insecure, vulnerable place it once was. Matter of fact, when Cole Hamels hit Rodriguez with a pitch in the second inning on Halloween night, the Yankees' All-Star third baseman and would-be centaur says, it had the opposite effect.

"Kind of woke me up a little bit," Rodriguez said early Monday morning, after his ninth-inning double had broken a Game 4 tie and moved the Yankees within one game of a championship. "Just reminded me, 'Hey, this is the World Series. Let's get it going a little bit.' "

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Woe, ever since, to the City of Brotherly Love and its red-pinstriped defending champions. Rodriguez hit a two-run home run in his very next Game 3 at-bat. The Phillies hit him twice more in the four plate appearances that followed, including one of the most obviously intentional HBPs in World Series history by Joe Blanton in Sunday night's first inning, and Rodriguez punished them by knocking in the go-ahead run in Game 4.

"[A-Rod]'s the reason why we're sitting here. ... Without him, who knows where our road may have stopped?
-- Johnny Damon He now has 15 RBI in this postseason -- tying a Yankees team record set by Bernie Williams in 1996 and matched by Scott Brosius in 1998 -- and will look Monday night to collect however many more he needs to make the Yankees World Series champs. At this point, nothing he does will surprise his appreciative teammates.

"I wasn't here before this season, so I couldn't tell you how he was," Yankees Game 5 starter A.J. Burnett said. "But I know he's about as relaxed as I could have imagined him ever being. It doesn't matter what the situation is when he comes up. He's confident. He's loose. He's hitting the ball and he's having a blast. When he's doing that, it's kind of hard to beat him."

"Relaxed" is not a word we have come to associate with Alex Rodriguez, especially not in the postseason. There are few prominent athletes who have ever been so clearly and uncomfortably unable to get themselves out of their own heads in big spots. It has, until this past month, been a defining aspect of Rodriguez that he comes up small when it matters most.

But that was then, and this is a loony new now. This is a transformed baseball world in which Rodriguez has just spent seven months calling attention to himself for on-field reasons only. A world in which he could take Kate Hudson to the team picnic and somehow not have it be a fiasco. A world in which Alex Rodriguez, known choke artist, has a chance to define himself as a Yankee World Series hero.

"He's the reason why we're sitting here and we're in Philadelphia right now," said Johnny Damon, whose tough nine-pitch at-bat and base-stealing magic act put him on third base ahead of Rodriguez's double in the ninth. "Without him, who knows where our road may have stopped? He's the guy who's been driving us through the playoffs."

Rodriguez is in such a good spot now, he's actually able to think his way out of a funk. After a rough first two games of the World Series, he took a deep breath and reminded himself what he needed to do to succeed. Sounds simple, but so few things have ever been simple with this guy that you have to treat it as a major psychological breakthrough.

"I made an adjustment after the first two games," Rodriguez said. "I was expanding the strike zone, and that's something I didn't do against Minnesota or Anaheim [in the first two rounds]."

And so here we are. A season that began with a spring-training revelation that the man regarded as the game's greatest player was, in fact, a steroid cheat may well end with that same man redeemed in ways no one ever imagined. As a hero. And a champion. And it may all be because he got things straight between the ears.

"Yes, I feel more relaxed," he said. "This year has been a unique year for me. Obviously, after spring training and all the stuff that I've been through, you have nothing to lose. For the first time in my career, I've felt like an underdog."

If that's the mental trick a man who makes $30 million a year needs to play on himself to get things clicking, then the team that signs those paychecks will gladly take it. But for Rodriguez, it was likely far more simple.

"When I get a good pitch to hit and I put a good swing on it," Rodriguez said, "good things usually happen."

Amazing, what a guy can accomplish when he gives himself over to the obvious.