The already strained relationship between the New York Yankees and Alex Rodriguez somehow managed to get even worse on Friday as an anonymous Yankee official called the injured slugger's recent behavior "bizarre," according to Sports Illustrated.
The Yankees have not made a secret of their desire to get out from under the $100 million plus that they still owe Rodriguez from the ridiculous 10-year, $275 million contract they signed him to. Unfortunately baseball contracts are guaranteed so they will either need Rodriguez to retire or find some other team willing to trade for the aging third basemen which is incredibly unlikely.
All of the commotion started on Tuesday when Rodriquez tweeted that the surgeon who performed his latest hip surgery, Dr. Bryan Kelly, gave him the green light to begin playing.
It turns out that the Yankees were not planning on making that information public or they didn't agree with Dr. Kelly's assessment. Whatever the reason it caused Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman to tell reporters that his player should "shut the f**k up," according to The Sporting News.
The New York Daily News has suggested that Rodriguez wants to come back and play in rehab games in order to retire. To explain, if Rodriguez plays in rehab games and finds himself physically incapable of doing so due to his hip injury he can essentially put himself onto the disabled list for the five years remaining on his contract and still collect his full salary.
The reason Rodriguez would be in such a hurry to do so is that his name has come up in the MLB investigation of the Biogenesis clinic which allegedly provided human growth hormone and other banned substances to MLB players. If MLB were to suspend Rodriquez without pay before he retired Rodriquez would lose $114 million, according to the New York Daily News.
"It's all about him getting his money and not losing it to suspension," a source close to the situation told the New York Daily News. "He knows he's never going to the Hall of Fame. All that's left for him is to make sure he gets his money - all of it."
Further complicating the situation is that despite publicly announcing that he was ready to play Rodriguez told Cashman and team president Randy Levine that he was unsure of when he would be able to take the field again on a conference call, according to the New York Daily News.
"I don't know when I'm coming back," Rodriquez said according to the New York Daily News' source. "It could be in July, it could be in August. It might not be this year."
It remains to be seen when exactly Rodriguez will return to the Yankees, if he returns at all, but until then the two sides will probably continue to feud on the back pages of New York newspapers.
