Alex Rodriguez Sets Another Record.......Sort Of

So the Yankees come into their day game on Wednesday with a chance to sweep the Kansas City Royals. Going into the bottom of the 3rd inning of the game at Yankee Stadium, the Yanks and Royal were locked in a 1-1 tie. Gardner started the inning off with a double to deep right. Then it was followed up with a Chase Headley walk. Royals Started Chris Young left a pitch up for Alex Rodriguez, who crushed a home run to left, driving in three and giving the Yankees a 4-1 lead. Those three RBI's for A-Rod on the home run give him 1,995 in his career, moving him into 3rd place all time in Major League Baseball History. Those RBI's also set a new record for the American League, passing the record previously held by Lou Gehrig, who finished his career with 1,993.

There is some debate over this, and we will touch on the A-Rod aspect of this in a little bit. Babe Ruth, who many consider to be the greatest player to ever live, is credited with 1,992 career RBIs. That total is incomplete because the RBI was recognized as an official stat by Elias, the official statistician of Major League Baseball, beginning in 1920. Ruth started playing in 1914. If you take into account the stats that aren't recognized by MLB or Elias, than the Babe finished his career with 2,214, good for 2nd all time. A-Rod now sits one behind Barry Bonds, who is second on the list with 1,996 and well behind the all time leader Hank Aaron, who had 2,297 career Runs Batted In.

Now let the arguments and debates go on about Alex Rodriguez. Is the records tainted? Of course it is, to a degree. While with Texas in 2003, Alex Rodriguez started using steroids, at least that's the date he has given everybody. Also according to reports he has been using them since his time in Texas. So lets take a look at a few numbers here. Between his time in Texas (three years) and his time with the Yankees (eleven seasons), A-Rod has hit 476 home runs and driven in an even 1,400 RBI's. So you could make that argument that those numbers are tainted, which may be true but I'll touch on that shortly.

Lets take a look at those numbers he put up with his first big league team, the Seattle Mariners. While in Seattle, a city which he played seven years, A-Rod hit 189 home runs and drove in 595 runs. His best year in Seattle was was 1998 when he hit 42 homers and drove in 124 runs. If you break down those averages in the seven years he was in Seattle (based on a 162 game schedule), it would average out to 122 RBI's a year and 39 home runs. So had A-Rod had played his entire career the same clean way we thought he did while in Seattle, he still would have come close to breaking these records.

A-Rod, much like Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire and all those other guys who have been linked to Steroids, will forever have that stigma around them and will have every record they ever set questioned. Which is why people are sort of putting down this record. Is it a big accomplishment? Absolutely. Its a very tough thing to be able to do to drive in a run in a baseball game, let alone a professional baseball game. At the same time, the fact that A-Rod is a known steroid user is what makes this record as tainted as it is.

Was he a good hitter while playing with the Mariners? Yes he was. Was he a clean hitter while playing in Seattle? I'm not so sure. I'd like to think that he was, but I really have no way of knowing. At the same time, part of me almost doesn't want to know. I'd like to think that he, much like Barry Bonds in his days with the Pirates, was a great hitter and could have smashed all kinds of records. And done it all with a clean slate. But nothing is clean when it really comes to A-Rod anymore.

So congratulations to Alex Rodriguez for passing Gerig on the all time RBI list, no matter how tainted it is.