When the Yanks signed A-Rod last year, there was a lot of racket from Yankee haters about the plan to station him at third base. As a member of the Mariners and the Rangers he had been a successful and popular shortstop, but New York already had a successful and uber-popular shortstop in Derek Jeter and a hole left by pick-up basketball champ Aaron Boone at third base. In signing A-Rod to a third base post, Steinbrenner opened up a huge can of worms (worms = controversy here) over whether A-Rod would have been a better shortstop than Jeter.

Clearly, that was and is a moot point. Jeter is the captain of the team, the leader figuratively and literally. There was also no solid reason to believe that A-Rod would be better at shortstop than tried-and-true Jeter. Both Jeter and A-Rod committed approximately the same number of errors per game lifetime at shortstop (the difference being about three one-thousandths of a point), and their put-outs, assists, and double-play stats are nearly identical. The deal breaker, the issue that sealed A-Rods fate to third base, is the simple fact that Jeter was the heart of the Yankees. Had the Yankees chosen to move their star player to make way for a newcomer (to the team), it would have had devastating effects on the reputation of Yankee management - - and who needs more reason to hate them?

The great ending to this situation is that A-Rod proved to be just as amazing at third base, if not more amazing, as he had been in his career at shortstop. The Yankees made the right move. Perhaps that’s where he belonged in Seattle and Texas….