I don’t really follow baseball much beyond Sportscenter highlights, but even I’m aware of the vitriol that’s been aimed at Alex Rodriguez over the years. There have been plenty of reasons for baseball fans to hop on the A-Rod hate-train–he’s “overpaid,” has a history of occasionally odd behavior, he has one of those terrible “First initial of your first name / first syllable of your last name” nicknames that makes me twinge every time I type it out. And he has odd facial features that make him one of the ugliest good looking dudes in history, along with Daniel Craig.

He looks like a Surrogate...

But for Yankees fans the real reason to hate him has been a perceived lack of clutch performances, particularly in the postseason. Until this postseason, when he apparently had his Neo-in-the-Matrix, “Holy crap, I can see everything for the binary code that it is” epiphany and became invincible.

Before this season, no matter how spectacularly A-Rod performed to get his team into the playoffs–with MVP seasons in ’05 and ’07–he didn’t show up in October. Whereas some fan bases would have just stood by their man and trusted that one day he would produce for them when it mattered most, this is New York. To quote the Green Goblin, “…one thing they love more than a hero is to see a hero fail, fall, die trying. In spite of everything you’ve done for them, eventually they will hate you.”

But now that he’s performed, what will the Yankee fan who’s been clinging to the A-Rod hate do now? Secretly pray to the baseball gods that he’ll strike out in the bottom of the ninth in Game 7 of the World Seires so they can say that the rest of his beastly ’09 playoff stats (5 home runs and a 11 RBIs through 7 games so far) don’t matter? He’s tied the game up or given the team the lead with clutch shots through these playoffs, but there will be those hometown fans who want those moments erased by a monumental failure sometime later in the playoffs.

It makes sense that Alex is hated outside of New York. For one, he’s a gotdamn Yankee. Before football gave us the Cowboys and basketball gave us the Lakers, baseball gave us the Yanks. The team that won too much and had too many colorful characters. The team that won over enough fans outside of New York to make the fans who didn’t swoon to their charms hate them even more. Everyone else is supposed to hate Alex, but Yankee fans? You either have to put that hate in a bottle and set it adrift in the sea, never to be seen again–you can even pay a trumpeter to play “Taps” as you watch your hate vanish beyond the horizon–or…?

Or find another reason to hate the guy. He’s dating Kate Hudson. I don’t keep up with celeb gossip but there has to be some sketchy dirt on her you can latch onto, right? He’s buddying up with Jay-Z, even comes to bat with Jay’s “Already Home” playing through the stadium speakers. Doesn’t that song have a cuss word in it? Dear Lord, swearing heard in New York? Insanity!

Selfish jerk, hitting home runs and stealing all the glory...

I’d say you could still hate him for the steroid allegations, but everybody forgave Andy Pettite and Jason Giambi as fast as possible when they got caught. So really, what else can you do to maintain hate for the guy, short of hoping he’ll fail–effectively rooting against your team?

Hm… maybe you shouldn’t let them be “your’ team anymore. Given all the fury you’ve aimed at one of your team’s stars for so long, you’re probably closer to not being a real Yankee fan than you realize. Might as well go the distance, but you’ll want to time it right so you don’t miss the party should Alex lead his team to a title this year.