ARod Hit His 660th Home Run, Now What?

So ARod went deep last night to not only give the Yankees a win in Boston, but to also tie Willie Mays on the all time HR list at 660. On top of that we saw an emotional ARod that we haven’t seen in the past, when being interviewed by Pedro Gomez after the game. This is all fun stuff but what happens now that ARod has reached this milestone and the Yankees technically owe him $6mil?

First things first, the Yankees aren’t cutting a check this morning, because they say this milestone is unmarketable and PED use cancels out the agreement. It sucks because I can see their point but at the same time, you now have a team that is playing good, putting one of it’s players in a position where he now has to sue the team. Luckily for the fans this will be handled by the players association and probably won’t be a real issue until after the season. The only problem now is going to be the media asking both sides about it.

I rarely go against the organization but in this case I think they are wrong. When ARod his his 600th HR after admitting to taking PEDs the team marketed him, so what’s changed now? Fans either care or don’t care that a player took something, never the amount of times something was taken, it’s a black or white situation. In fact I think the Yankees left money on the table by not marketing this and making back the money that they will probably have to pay at the end of the season. ARod has won a lot of fans back and people are coming out to see him play because he is playing well, that right there drives numbers up and marketed correctly would more than cover the cost of a contract clause that they never should have offered.

It’s also not hard to argue that social media is marketing and by so many people complaining in the spring that the team was ignoring him, the team was forced to market him.

No matter what happens after the year, the hope just has to be that ARod keeps hitting and leading by example in the box to get on base.