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A-Rod Now a Yankee

Aired February 16, 2004 - 14:44   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. It's a done deal for the A-list trade of baseball's current MVP. This is some trade. Commissioner Bud Selig today approved the trade of Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez. He'll go from the Texas Rangers to the New York Yankees. The Rangers will get All-Star second baseman Alfonso Soriano and a player to be named later.
The team will reportedly pay $167 million of the $179 million left on Rodriguez's contract. The Yankees front office will pay a lot more for its starting lineup with Rodriguez. The projected salaries for 2004 total about $113.5 million. There you see it on that screen. That's according to "The New York Times."

So what do sports aficionados have to say about the Bronx Bombshell? Larry Rocha is a baseball columnist for "The Newark Star Ledger." Covers the Yanks and all matters related to Gotham sports. Good to see you.

LARRY ROCHA, BASEBALL COLUMNIST, "THE NEWARK STAR LEDGER": Thank you.

O'BRIEN: All right. So explain this one. George Steinbrenner -- let's face it. The Red Sox/Yankees dispute runs deep. And probably he would have paid any amount of money to pull this off. Right?

ROCHA: Probably, yes, basically. This obviously is the greatest rivalry in sports. It goes back to -- 85 years to when the Yankees got Babe Ruth from the Red Sox. The ending is always the same. Sometimes the route to that ending is different.

But basically I think the way to explain the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry to the basic person is just think about the Road Runner and Wiley Coyote. And the Red Sox are Wiley Coyote. And every time they're ready to drop that wrecking ball full of explosives on the Road Runner's head, the Yankees pull off something and...

O'BRIEN: An anvil drops on the franchise. Acme something or other blows up in their face.

ROCHA: Right.

O'BRIEN: All right, so let's extrapolate out for a moment. Dream teams are seldom the dream they pretend to be. Will the Yankees really be worth the money?

ROCHA: You know, they're going to be a great team. Right now they're the best team in baseball. When you look...

O'BRIEN: Yes, but what about their pitching?

ROCHA: Their pitching? They did lose some pitchers this year but added Kevin Brown and Javier Vasquez. They've gotten a lot better in their bullpen and middle relief. Obviously, the season needs to be played. And there are some injury question marks in their starting rotation.

The health of three of their new pitchers, Kevin Brown, Jon Lieber and a couple of guys in the bullpen are questioned. But on paper, looking at it, the assemblance of talent is incredible, it's awesome. And they have to be the favorites.

O'BRIEN: I mean this is a gold-plated payroll. It's been gold- plated long before Rodriguez came there. Yet the Yankees are constantly getting knocked off by teams like the Marlins. What up with that?

ROCHA: That is true. Well, once you get to the playoffs, there is a lot of luck involved. It becomes a crap shoot. And a team with a few hot pitchers can win. That's happened in the last three years.

So obviously we're not going to know how this works out until the end of October of this year. This is not to say nobody else has a chance. As you pointed out, Marlins, Diamondbacks and Angels have won the last three World Series.

But certainly the Yankees are overwhelming favorites going into the season.

O'BRIEN: But having said all of this, aren't you embarrassed to be a New Yorker? It's a little bit glutinous. Don't you think? Come on.

ROCHA: It is, it is a little bit, yes.

There's no romance in any of this. Certainly there's no romance in any of this. Their payroll advantage is enormous. It doesn't seem fair.

They're playing within the rules. They didn't make up the rules, baseball made up the rules. And they're exploiting them. You know sometimes it doesn't seem fair when Randy Johnson strikes out 15 people in a game. But those are the rules. And just because they have an advantage doesn't mean they shouldn't exploit it.

But I don't -- I'm not a Yankee fan. I don't know how Yankee fans can really feel emotionally invested in all of this. Every year there's a new superstar. There is never any sort of emotional debt they have to pay. They never have to suffer at all.

It does -- I think it would be embarrassing and, you know, a die- hard Yankee fan -- when have they ever had to die-hard?

O'BRIEN: Never. (CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: Quickly, it's good for the Yankees. Obviously bad for the Red Sox. And for baseball, isn't it bad for baseball?

ROCHA: No, I don't think it's bad for baseball. Every great leader has to have a great enemy. Every great sport has to have a great sort of super franchise that people love to hate.

It's great for baseball when the Yankees are powerful. And people love to hate them. It's great for baseball that the Yankees were there in October the last three years and lost. It's -- you know...

O'BRIEN: I prefer instead of Road Runner, I prefer the Darth Vader analogy. So I'm going to go with that one.

ROCHA: Right, the Evil Empire and that's how Larry Luchino, the Red Sox president got Steinbrenner so angry last year.

O'BRIEN: And hence, we see the post-script to it now.

All right, well the story is over. It never will be. It will probably be the same as long as we live. Larry Rocha, thanks for dropping by.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired February 16, 2004 - 14:44   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. It's a done deal for the A-list trade of baseball's current MVP. This is some trade. Commissioner Bud Selig today approved the trade of Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez. He'll go from the Texas Rangers to the New York Yankees. The Rangers will get All-Star second baseman Alfonso Soriano and a player to be named later.
The team will reportedly pay $167 million of the $179 million left on Rodriguez's contract. The Yankees front office will pay a lot more for its starting lineup with Rodriguez. The projected salaries for 2004 total about $113.5 million. There you see it on that screen. That's according to "The New York Times."

So what do sports aficionados have to say about the Bronx Bombshell? Larry Rocha is a baseball columnist for "The Newark Star Ledger." Covers the Yanks and all matters related to Gotham sports. Good to see you.

LARRY ROCHA, BASEBALL COLUMNIST, "THE NEWARK STAR LEDGER": Thank you.

O'BRIEN: All right. So explain this one. George Steinbrenner -- let's face it. The Red Sox/Yankees dispute runs deep. And probably he would have paid any amount of money to pull this off. Right?

ROCHA: Probably, yes, basically. This obviously is the greatest rivalry in sports. It goes back to -- 85 years to when the Yankees got Babe Ruth from the Red Sox. The ending is always the same. Sometimes the route to that ending is different.

But basically I think the way to explain the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry to the basic person is just think about the Road Runner and Wiley Coyote. And the Red Sox are Wiley Coyote. And every time they're ready to drop that wrecking ball full of explosives on the Road Runner's head, the Yankees pull off something and...

O'BRIEN: An anvil drops on the franchise. Acme something or other blows up in their face.

ROCHA: Right.

O'BRIEN: All right, so let's extrapolate out for a moment. Dream teams are seldom the dream they pretend to be. Will the Yankees really be worth the money?

ROCHA: You know, they're going to be a great team. Right now they're the best team in baseball. When you look...

O'BRIEN: Yes, but what about their pitching?

ROCHA: Their pitching? They did lose some pitchers this year but added Kevin Brown and Javier Vasquez. They've gotten a lot better in their bullpen and middle relief. Obviously, the season needs to be played. And there are some injury question marks in their starting rotation.

The health of three of their new pitchers, Kevin Brown, Jon Lieber and a couple of guys in the bullpen are questioned. But on paper, looking at it, the assemblance of talent is incredible, it's awesome. And they have to be the favorites.

O'BRIEN: I mean this is a gold-plated payroll. It's been gold- plated long before Rodriguez came there. Yet the Yankees are constantly getting knocked off by teams like the Marlins. What up with that?

ROCHA: That is true. Well, once you get to the playoffs, there is a lot of luck involved. It becomes a crap shoot. And a team with a few hot pitchers can win. That's happened in the last three years.

So obviously we're not going to know how this works out until the end of October of this year. This is not to say nobody else has a chance. As you pointed out, Marlins, Diamondbacks and Angels have won the last three World Series.

But certainly the Yankees are overwhelming favorites going into the season.

O'BRIEN: But having said all of this, aren't you embarrassed to be a New Yorker? It's a little bit glutinous. Don't you think? Come on.

ROCHA: It is, it is a little bit, yes.

There's no romance in any of this. Certainly there's no romance in any of this. Their payroll advantage is enormous. It doesn't seem fair.

They're playing within the rules. They didn't make up the rules, baseball made up the rules. And they're exploiting them. You know sometimes it doesn't seem fair when Randy Johnson strikes out 15 people in a game. But those are the rules. And just because they have an advantage doesn't mean they shouldn't exploit it.

But I don't -- I'm not a Yankee fan. I don't know how Yankee fans can really feel emotionally invested in all of this. Every year there's a new superstar. There is never any sort of emotional debt they have to pay. They never have to suffer at all.

It does -- I think it would be embarrassing and, you know, a die- hard Yankee fan -- when have they ever had to die-hard?

O'BRIEN: Never. (CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: Quickly, it's good for the Yankees. Obviously bad for the Red Sox. And for baseball, isn't it bad for baseball?

ROCHA: No, I don't think it's bad for baseball. Every great leader has to have a great enemy. Every great sport has to have a great sort of super franchise that people love to hate.

It's great for baseball when the Yankees are powerful. And people love to hate them. It's great for baseball that the Yankees were there in October the last three years and lost. It's -- you know...

O'BRIEN: I prefer instead of Road Runner, I prefer the Darth Vader analogy. So I'm going to go with that one.

ROCHA: Right, the Evil Empire and that's how Larry Luchino, the Red Sox president got Steinbrenner so angry last year.

O'BRIEN: And hence, we see the post-script to it now.

All right, well the story is over. It never will be. It will probably be the same as long as we live. Larry Rocha, thanks for dropping by.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com