Splicetoday

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Jul 02, 2008, 06:51AM

A True Yankee At Last

Alex Rodriguez has taken a lot of heat as he adjusts to media spotlight inherent in playing for the New York Yankees. One crucial ingredient had been missing before Rodriguez could truly be considered along with the all-time greats: a  ridiculous high-profile romance. Now that he's been linked with Madonna, this writer thinks he's ready for the Ruth/Mantle/DiMaggio comparison.

From Joe DiMaggio's 274-day marriage to Marilyn Monroe to Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson swapping wives to Roger Clemens allegedly sharing his drug dealer with Mrs. Clemens, it has long been one's right as a Yankee to lead a colorful and absurd love life. Rodriguez got in the game last year, when his purported dalliances with purportedly muscular exotic dancers made the front pages, but not until now has he taken his play to the rarefied heights of past Bronx legends. Today, at long last, he has earned his pinstripes.

According to OK! magazine, which kicked off the current kerfuffle Rodriguez and Madonna were first spotted in public together last October, at a gym — just months after Canseco began threatening to disclose the dark truth. Suspiciously, this times right up with Rodriguez's infamous attempt to upstage the World Series by announcing, during the decisive fourth game, that he would be opting out of his contract. Could Madonna — suffering, I read, from the breakdown of her marriage to insufferably lousy director Guy Ritchie — have put Rodriguez up to the announcement? Could she have worked out with the young third baseman as a way of striking back at Canseco for spurning her all those many years ago? Could Canseco thus be inadvertently responsible for Rodriguez, the Newman to his Seinfeld, earning a $300 million contract? To ask these questions is, I think, to answer them.

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