Is A-Rod Human?

When I began conceiving this post I wasn't sure whether I was seriously Pro or Anti-AROD. Ok, clearly a lie...I love the man. BUT, as blog psychologist, I must simply assess the issue at hand in a firmly objective fashion.

By definition, A God Complex is a psychological state of mind in which a person believes that they have supernatural powers or god-like abilities.

Clearly A-Rod doesn't merely "believe" he has supernatural powers....He KNOWS he does.

Therefore, by my estimations, A-Rod IS GOD, and this is a completely unbiased fact.

Now, we all know this immortal being well enough that I don't have to go over his pre-legendary life. However, not many of you know his ex-wife--Cynthia Rodriguez.

Cynthia is clearly a tramp. While she recently divorced our modern-day Caesar, she clearly didn't understand that maintaining a relationship with a legendary baseball player requires a few lessons she could have easily learned from her good friend, Madonna.

First, and most importantly, as A-rods wife, you CANNOT drink the water of mere mortals. You MUST DRINK THIS:

Kabbalah Water and/or ENERGY DRINK

More...

Now, understandly, given the plethora of H2O brands, this is only a minor mistake by Cynthia. Fortunately, A-Rod gives all his women three strikes.

See, Alex is a busy man. In fact for him, workin' the "hot corner" gets less steamy every day he CAN'T get down with his fair-skinned sagsack. As such, it is important to send him subtle messages of the sexual nature while his highness battles teams in far away lands such as San Diego, Seattle, and even Elijah Dukes' hometown of Tampa Bay.

More importantly, when Daddy gets home from a long road trip, it is necessary to support him to the FULLEST:

EPIC FAIL, Cynthia.

For those of you who can't make that out, her shirt says FUCK YOU. Not a way to get the juices flowin'. Madonna, on the other hand, has her shit on lockdown:

I don't think I even NEED to show you the Britney Spears one - it's probably too much girl-on-girl to handle in one sitting.

In any case, fantasizing is a huge part of any baseball players daily routine. It doesn't matter whether you're Sidney Ponson and primarily fantasize about fat Bermudan chicks, or you're just Paul Lo Duca and settle for a nice Abigail Breslin-type...Madonna's contributions to betterment of Alex's life at third base are CLEAR. Two strikes for Cynthia "C-Rod" Scurtis.

Rule number three for maintaining a relationship with A-Rod is quite self-evident...Whatever you do, DO NOT LOOK DUMBER than Johnny Damon's wife:

Okay, so you passed that test. Maybe there's still hope for you yet, Cynthia Rodriguez. Divorces are a lengthy process, but if A-Rod continues hitting .136 since you dropped the D-Bomb on him, he will probably strike you dead via lightning bolt before the next Yanks-Sox series.

E-Harmony: Baseball Edition

As a sometimes obsessively analytical individual, I have always been fascinated by the cognitive side of sports. While many sports fans may casually throw around terms like "team chemistry," or "momentum," few bother to actually understand their contributions to a teams overall productivity (or lack thereof).

For the sake of this article, we will start by looking at team chemistry/momentum solely in baseball (hint, hint—There is none.).

By definition, team chemistry is a rather ambiguous concept. In fact, it is a concept that cannot be grasped numerically. When applied to baseball, the Yankees may go on a 13-game winning streak and suddenly “they’ve got unstoppable momentum.” Suddenly, “the guys are rallying behind each other.” Suddenly, “team chemistry is at an all-time high.” Well, truth be told, this is a bunch of media-contrived bullcrap.

In baseball, there are no “high-energy” guys, no truly effective team leaders, no intangible character benefits, no contagious Kevin Garnett personalities, and certainly no significant ability to “improve the guys around you.” In other words, the Yankees are a group of twenty-five individuals lumped together, possessing no inherent team-based qualities. As a group, they have zero conscious control over their “teams” short-run success, even in the playoffs, and subsequently, they have no real control over when and how they will go on a momentous winning or losing streak. Try jamming that through your media-fed minds.

Now, this seems like a good time to bring up one of the more well-known managerial names in baseball—Billy Beane. Mr. Beane has reached universal baseball notoriety for a reason; He has, for a long time, lived religiously by the numbers, and only the numbers. Beane’s ability to pick statistical prodigies out of proverbial piles of minor-league trash seems like a mind-boggling game of luck to some. Yet, in applying Sabermetrics to minor league prospects before any other MLB managers, Beane ended up truly ahead of the game, at least for a fair while.

See, Billy understood that a baseball team is simply a machine made up of interchangeable parts that impose no real bonds upon one another. He understood that streaks weren’t about “team chemistry,” they were merely an inevitable result of baseball variance, and if you had the raw statistical edge behind you, despite a paltry-looking lineup (Cue Marco Scutaro), your group of 25 individuals would eventually win out, in the long run.

Now, if even the most deadly MLB lineups had any control over their short-run destiny they would certainly make a concerted effort to get it done in front of their home crowds, right? Well from 1999 to 2007 the Home Team has won at a whopping rate of 53.5%. In essence, you can pretty much throw home-field advantage out the window. Got a must-win series at home? You might as well flip a coin three times (Of course the coin should be weighted ever-so-slightly towards the team with better raw statistical talent).

To keep things concise, I think it’s important to recognize that baseball differs vastly from the other major sports in that a team’s success is going to be based solely on their raw statistical advantage against their opponents, and nothing else. Furthermore, this raw statistical advantage is expressed solely in the long-run, and thus individual games or series’ really aren’t indicative of any sort of talent advantages at all. You can throw sports ideologies like mental fortitude, hunger, veteran leadership, and team chemistry out the window. Glitz and glamour play the smallest of roles in baseball, yet the sports individual superstars seems to be valued just as much, if not more than a franchise-changing player like Lebron James. Rich Harden is worth only what his numbers indicate, nothing more, nothing less. Lebron, on the other hand, contributes what his statistics indicate, but also has the power to change the way his entire team functions and produces as a whole (More on this later).

There’s a reason why the underestimated ’03 Marlins won the World Series, and it wasn’t because of Steve Bartman. It’s simply that their long-run statistical edge hadn’t caught up to their paltry reputation yet. Cue the D-rays ’08.