I was there when George Steinbrenner strolled the couple of hundred yards from a commercial airport to Fort Lauderdale Stadium and officially came back from suspension in 1993, a scene made all the zanier because he had dressed up as Napoleon for a Sports Illustrated cover shot a few days earlier.
I was there in 1999 when The Boss called Hideki Irabu a fat puss-y toad, setting off a round of events in which interim manager Don Zimmer essentially melted down in public and the team was held hostage from flying West to begin its season as club honchos negotiated for hour after hour to get Irabu onto the charter. David Cone and Chili Davis — hysterically — ordered pizza to the clubhouse as players and media laughed at the craziness.
I have covered the Yankees as a beat guy or columnist for the past 25 years, the last 10 with Alex Rodriguez kissing mirrors, opting out of his contract to overshadow the completion of the World Series and writing notes on baseballs to get the phone numbers of women in the crowd while the ALCS was being waged.
And the best you can say about any of that now is that it is in competition for runner-up for the most bizarre moment in recent Yankees history.
Because if what appeared likely to happen today actually does occur, we are going to have the winner, the new champion, the one by which all others will be measured in Bronx Zoo history for the rest of time:
At noon, Alex Rodriguez is expected to be banished from baseball at least through next year, yet at 8 p.m. in Chicago, he is expected to make his 2013 major league debut. Thrown out in the afternoon, cleanup at night. He will be tied to the Black Sox and face the White Sox in one eight-hour period. Is it even conceivable that any other player working for any other franchise could be in this situation? Only A-Rod.
How does Randy Johnson getting into a fight with a camera man a day before his Yankees introduction or Roger Clemens announcing his own pinstripe return from the owner's box while a game is in progress even compete with that?
This promises to be surreal, unreal and The Real World blended into one. Execution and resurrection in about the time most folks will eat lunch and dinner.
MLB plans to announce about a dozen suspensions at midday. A-Rod is one of them, but really The One. The other 11 or so will be footnotes, all or almost all expected to accept suspensions of about 50 games. The main event is A-Rod. He is likely to get the rest of this year and all of next season. He also is all but certain to appeal.
And Bud Selig is now not expected to use his special powers within the Collective Bargaining Agreement to keep Rodriguez from the field until his arbitration is resolved in a few weeks. Selig is said to dread the optics of Rodriguez on a major league field today and the focus again being taken from the pennant races.
But the Commissioner did not want to incite a fight with the union at a time of relative labor peace and, mainly, he saw a growing backlash that suggested he was over-reaching with his powers due to a personal vendetta against Rodriguez. MLB feels that is all part of a noise machine created by the A-Rod camp to distract the public from what it believes is an overwhelming case that Rodriguez used illegal performance enhancers serially for years, lied to MLB more than anyone else about that use and tried in myr iad ways to impede the investigation.
MLB is going to try to put all of that into a package if the case does reach an arbitrator as a way to explain why A-Rod's punishment is so much more severe than the other players being sanctioned for Biogenesis ties.
But that could be weeks from now. Which assuming no injury setbacks — a big if — means weeks of games for Rodriguez, leaving him suspended and in suspended animation. Leaving him in the center of a traveling circus. The Yankees look more and more like they are not a playoff team, but how can you take your eyes off of this?
In actuality, for the Yankeess to reach the postseason the guy riding in on a black horse is going to have to be a hero or anti-hero, at least to Yankees fans who don't care how the wins come. It is drama and trauma. Reality TV at its best. The Bronx Zoo as you have never seen it before.
Really, think about it, dismissed and debut in the same day. It is unimaginable for anyone else.
Only A-Rod.
joel.sherman@nypost.com
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