TORONTO — From reviled to reborn. From saboteur to sparkplug.
From Joe Tacopina to Willie Mays.
Whatever you may think of Alex Rodriguez, you've got to give the dude points for versatility.
After captivating us off the field last week with some of the screwiest public relations maneuvers this side of Dennis Rodman, A-Rod now entertains us with another mini-renaissance, and makes us wonder: Can he reach the Say Hey Kid — and collect his $6 million bonus for 660 career home runs — before his day in baseball court?
It's a long shot, even after Rodriguez's second homer in two nights, putting him at 651, helped the Yankees pound the Blue Jays 7-1 last night at Rogers Centre. Then again, many informed medical people thought it to be a long shot the 38-year-old would ever again play in a major-league game after undergoing left hip surgery in January. And many informed baseball people didn't think the Yankees could even fantasize about the playoffs with less than week before Labor Day.
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A-ROD AGAIN: Alex Rodriguez is congratulated after hitting his second home run in as many nights.
"These games are so important for us," Rodriguez said, pooh-poohing a question about Mays. "We need to win like oxygen."
With a .284/.369/.473 slash line in 20 games, A-Rod has joined the reacquired Alfonso Soriano — whom the Yankees of course dealt to Texas for Rodriguez in 2004 — as the founders of a reconstructed Yankees offense. He blasted a seventh-inning homer to center field off Blue Jays righty reliever Esmil Rogers.
Winning pitcher Andy Pettitte, who enjoyed his own brush with greatness by passing Jack Morris on the all-time victories list with 255, admitted to being surprised by A-Rod's output.
"You just don't know what to expect. He missed half of the season," Pettitte said. He looks really good at the plate. … Alex is a great hitter. If he's healthy, he's going to hit."
Said manager Joe Girardi of A-Rod: "He's impacting the baseball. That's what we wanted to see."
Soriano went deep twice last night, the second one career number 400, and has 11 home runs in 120 at-bats since rejoining the Yankees.
With 30 games left on the Yankees' schedule, A-Rod would need to go deep at a less ridiculous pace than Soriano's to match Mays this year, yet nine home runs in about a month still seems like a pretty tall order. The Yankees would love to see their least favorite player go on such a roll. It would naturally aid the team's playoff run, and it also would get the contracted $6 million bonus out of the way before 2014, when Hal Steinbrenner still wants to get the team payroll under $189 million.
Of course, Rodriguez might not play at all for the Yankees next year, as the appeal hearing for his 211-game suspension is likely to occur during the offseason. That drama looms, but A-Rod's smart decision to shut down Tacopina, the blustery attorney, has inoculated the Yankees' clubhouse from the extracurricular activities involving the team's front office and medical staff and Major League Baseball.
While he performed pretty well during the height of the lunacy, A-Rod agreed with a question that he, too, was benefiting from the lack of noise emanating from his camp.
"I love the game of baseball," Rodriguez said. "We need 100 percent and focus on the game of baseball."
Imagine the Yankees, in serious conflict with their highest-paid player, having to honor A-Rod in a pregame ceremony for tying Mays. Imagine the screaming by the finger-wagging moralists who would conveniently ignore John Milner's 1985 testimony that Mays had "red juice" — liquid amphetamines — during his final days with the Mets.
Shoot, as long as we're getting crazy, imagine Bud Selig handing A-Rod the World Series Most Valuable Player trophy. The commissioner could qualify for the Guinness Book of World Records' "fakest smile."
Nights like this make you envision all sorts of scenarios. Because we never thought we'd be seeing what we're seeing now. Even in all sorts of trouble legal and physical, A-Rod can still catch us off guard like no one else.
kdavidoff@nypost.com
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