A-Rod was on 60 Minutes last night, interviewed by Katie Couric. No part of my brain can even venture to guess why they chose Couric to do the interview. She was worse than awful. Couric tried to be hard hitting in her questions, but failed to get much of a response from Rodriguez. Like most athletes, his answers were short, answering yes or no whenever he could. Couric failed run with it, and try to draw out his answers. Instead, she simply went on and read her next question. She didn't even read them well. A-Rod was pretty stoic through most of the interview. The big focus was, of course, whether he'd ever done steroids, which, of course, he said had not. I don't know whether I believe him or not. But this I do believe:
"I've never felt overmatched on the baseball field. I've always been a very strong, dominant position. And I felt that if I did my work as I've done since I was, you know, a rookie back in Seattle, I didn't have a problem competing at any level. So, no."
A-Rod showed a led ittle humility and honesty when he was asked about his post season play ("I stunk"), about getting booed by Yankee fans ("It's awful. It's terrible."), and about interrupting the World Series with his announcement about leaving the Yankees ("nightmare"). The blame for a lot of A-Rod's problems can easily be traced back to Boras and Alex did express disappointment in that relationship, but he didn't seem like he had the balls (or is it brains?) to unload the Anti-Christ.
Overall, A-Rod came off a little dumber than I expected. I expected him to dance around questions like he danced around base paths, but he's not quick witted enough to do that. He also came off more honest than I expected. I thought he'd be defensive and cocky. Almost makes me want to believe him... another thing that I do believe though -- when showing Katie his trophy room, he said he'd trade it all for a world championship...
read the transcript of the 60 Minutes interview and watch some video clips
here.
