His season in hell has taken a twist or two since Francisco Rodriguez's only too-well publicized arrest and, it turned out, decommissioning for the season thanks to a torn ligament incurred while punching out his common-law wife's father. The twists only begin with Rodriguez ducking time in the calaboose.
A judge ruled against jail despite K-Rod's having sent the lady some 56 text messages, most of which prodded for a reconciliation of sorts, several of which accused her family of manipulating her while exploiting his baseball wealth, and all of which violated a court restraining order.
He returned to court Tuesday, slapped with a fresh charge of criminal contempt piling onto the mess that has already put his life with the New York Mets in serious jeopardy. He left court with the understanding that he would see the inside of a cell if he violated it again.
A few further details of the post-11 August loss (to the Colorado Rockies) outburst that started the whole mess in the first place have seeped forth. It may have been one thing for a temperamental pitcher coming off a bad outing to deck his common-law father-in-law, the grandfather of his children, after the older man ordered him to man up and pitch better. But it may have been something else again if Rodriguez swung in defense of his mother, who also happened to be in the Citi Field family room on the night in question.
Rodriguez hadn't taken his lumps in that game — he wasn't even in the game. There has since been whispering that, while the rest of the club had pretty much surrendered hope after the All-Star Break, held their tongues, and put on a professional face that some might consider an unrealistic mask, it still got to Rodriguez — who spent most of his pre-Mets career going where few of his teammates have gone before (the postseason, that is) — a little more deeply.
But he returned to the clubhouse after that loss and, when Carlos Pena (no known relation to the ballplayer of the same name) jabbed at him verbally, Rodriguez's mother stood up for her son, admirably enough. According to the New York Daily News, it was when Pena ordered the woman to shut up that K-Rod lost it entirely.
He thundered to the old man that neither he nor anyone else talks to his mami that way, and proceeded to support that assertion with a shot in the head.
No one pretends Rodriguez has lacked for issues of self control since he signed with the Mets, after a distinguished, record-setting career with the Los Angeles Angels that only began when he came up, seemingly from nowhere, and made his bones as a postseason assassin during the Angels' staggering run to their first World Series ring almost a decade ago.
But even the least composed of men would seem to have a right to stand up for his mother. It's one thing to get into your own grille over a night on the job that isn't quite the kind of night for which you earn your keep, but it's something else again to get into your mother's grille when she's doing precisely what you would do yourself, once hopes, should it be your child under siege.
These are times in which even parents get thrown under the proverbial bus when their children find themselves cornered and desperate. Issues though he has, there is something disturbingly admirable about the idea that Francisco Rodriguez might have put everything he has on the line and maybe even thought, subconsciously, the hell with all that, on behalf of sticking up for his mami.
For a little perspective, compare Rodriguez's scenario to this: Three Mets didn't join the team when they visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center during the Mets' recent stand against the Washington Nationals. These are the reported reasons: Luis Castillo said he gets squeamish in the hospital; Carlos Beltran begged off because he was already committed to a meeting involving a Puerto Rican high school he's building; Oliver Perez simply replied that it was none of anyone's business why he didn't go.
Those three may not lose half of what Rodriguez stands to lose, on or off the field, whether or not they remain Mets beyond this season. (Pace Mike Lupica, it is reasonable to assume that a man who'd stand up for his mami, even against his common-law father-in-law, is a man who would not be squeamish, prior committed, or otherwise talked out of visiting the wounded in a military hospital were he allowed to continue team activities.)
In theory, K-Rod can recover his reputation and his career with only a few small contortions, depending on what becomes of the Mets' bid to convert his contract to non-guaranteed or the Players' Association's bid to thwart the Mets. Recovering his household may prove a lot more arduous.
His estranged common-law wife and her father have legal counsel, and enough of the drift of the now-contentious text messages expressed Rodriguez's anxiety that he has lost his children. If the Daily News has the background right, he would be something less than human if he wasn't trying to reconcile the peculiar idea that standing up for your mother can cost you your children.
Compared to that, reconciling a baseball job, if not a baseball career, is at least as easy as K-Rod once made dispatching an enemy lineup appear.
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