“The most despised player in baseball history”

Allen Barra is making sense about Alex Rodriguez:

Let’s consider it from a historical perspective. Mickey Mantle is the demi-God of Yankees postseason play (though, of course, Mickey’s postseason games were all World Series because the playoffs didn’t start until 1969, the year after he retired). Mantle played in 65 postseason games, 10 fewer than A-Rod, and batted 230 times, 16 more. His BA was .257, six points lower than A-Rod’s. Mickey hit a World-Series-record 18 home runs, five more than Rodriguez’s postseason total, but actually had one fewer RBI, 40 to 41. But Mantle was surrounded by much better hitters, most notably Yogi Berra, and pitchers, like Whitey Ford, so nobody noticed when Mantle didn’t come through because somebody else on the Yankees usually did.

[snip]

[W]hat has Rodriguez accomplished since 2004? He has been an All-Star in seven of nine seasons, won two MVP awards, and hit 302 home runs. He was arguably the league’s MVP in 2009, when he missed 38 games but led the Yankees to the 2009 AL pennant and their only World Series win since 2000. Take him away, and the Yankees entire postseason history is a 12-year record of frustration and failure.

Read the whole thing.

If you polled mainstream sportswriters on the question of who’s had the better career, Alex Rodriguez or Ichiro Suzuki, would Rodriguez get 10 percent of the vote?