LIKE BLAMING LONGSTREET FOR LOSING THE CIVIL WAR:

Blaming A-Rod seems perfectly acceptable (Ken Davidoff, August 26, 2008, Newsday)

We often talk about the game finding a particular player. But Tuesday night, it felt like this whole 2008 Yankees season hoisted itself from its hammock and staggered around, tossing aside empty whiskey bottles and half-eaten bags of Cheetos, until it tracked down Alex Rodriguez.

Good Lord. Talk about a beautiful wedding of perception and reality.

A-Rod doesn't deserve the most blame for this playoff-free Yankees season, not with the overall numbers he has tallied. But Tuesday night, in the season's most important game, the $275-million man earned the scorn of Yankee Stadium like he rarely has before.

An 0-for-5 with seven stranded teammates on base and a fielding error, in a brutal, possibly fatal, 7-3 loss to the Red Sox, will work people into a pretty good lather.

A-Rod is at .308/398/582 28 78 16 (412) and only plays 3b because of the ego of the guy to his left.

Meanwhile, Brian Cashman not only put together one of the worst defensive teams imaginable (Giambi should have had the ball on which Rodriguez got an error) but failed to address the team's manifest pitching problems and left the young pitchers in the dubious care of notorious arm-wrecker Joe Girardi, so that none of the three are in the majors now. It's a team built for failure. Blaming one of the few guys who isn't one is crazy.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 27, 2008 8:30 AM