Even though Squawker readers tell me over and over to stop paying attention to what ESPN New York’s Wallace Matthews has to say, I still read him every time he writes. Yes, it’s a guilty pleasure, although I wouldn’t exactly call it a pleasure!
It’s more like a “there must be a pony in here somewhere” thing; while he writes a lot of silliness and hyperbole, every so often there is actually something worthwhile or interesting in his columns. And I do appreciate that Matthews has a sense of humor about himself, as evidenced in his tweets.
Anyhow, the reason I am bringing him up today is because of the pre-game talk the baseball (and occasionally, boxing) writer had with Alex Rodriguez yesterday. Matthews details it in his column:
Before the game, sitting in the Yankees’ dugout, A-Rod felt like talking. And he felt like talking not about baseball, but boxing.
“What makes this guy Pacquaio so good?” he asked a reporter he knew had covered a fair number of fights.
“Relentlessness,” he was told. “Determination. Viciousness.”
With each adjective, his eyes got wider. Then, he went out and channeled his inner PacMan, swinging for the KO on every pitch, and later he would say that when he ripped a 3-2 pitch right at the third baseman in his first at-bat, he knew he was coming out of the funk he had been in for the past month.
“I thought my first at-bat set the tone,” he said. “I was happy with every swing I took tonight, and I felt like my legs were under me. Just like a boxer.”
Heh! Maybe it was Wally’s boxing talk that did it!
Matthews is teasing on Twitter about his influence on Twitter:
I am taking credit for A-Rod’s big night so far. B4 the game, we talked boxing and Manny Pac in the dugout. Now, A-Rod’s hitting like him
For once, a journalist was a force for good with the Yankees!
Of course, as Matthews points out later in his article, the last Yankee to break out of a slump with a two-homer day was Derek Jeter. Since then, the captain has been hitting just .138 since the slump “ended.” So don’t get too excited about A-Rod just yet.
What do you think? Tell us about it!
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