If A-Rod continues to struggle this season, you will begin to hear that he still needs surgery, he’s not healthy, etc. If he struggles in 2010 and beyond, you will begin to hear that he is getting older, his best years are behind him, etc. What you never seem to hear is that maybe this is the real A-Rod, minus the ‘roids.

And we all know how much trouble bloggers can get into when bringing up ‘roids, but if Joba’s fastball and starpower continue to diminish, someone has to at least bring up the possibility that this guy is another Gagne plummeting back down to Earth right before our eyes.

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What we’re finally beginning to see is Girardi’s influence on this team. In this week alone, we’ve been treated to Bruney’s misguided, #27-influenced chirping and now we’re on the verge of a mutiny against Jorge Posada. Girardi has always had a tepid relationship with his former teammate and it’s obvious that the young pitchers (like Joba) have picked up on this. Couple this with the rise of Cervelli (sorry, but we’re not sold yet) and you’ve got the makings of a mutiny. Maybe Posada deserves better. But it’s obvious the pitchers don’t care much about his Yankeeography resume. So it’s up to Girardi to step up and quickly resolve this. In other words, it looks like we’re headed for a very bad ending.

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Brian Bruney’s comments are no surprise. When you play for a manager that insists that the other team is always throwing at you (while your guys never throw intentionally at anyone) then of course you are going to come to believe some odd things - such as the idea that K-Rod celebrates excessively while Joba or the pie throwers do not. Perhaps Girardi’s stint at YES has contributed to these bizarre intrepretations of reality. It seems he’s stuck in ‘Yankees Classic’ mode - where the Bombers can do no wrong and never ever lose.

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This is how jaded we have become: if A-Rod returns and does really well, we are going to assume he is still cheating. If he does poorly, we are going to assume that this is the real (and clean) A-Rod. Sorry.

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So it’s no surprise that we have Joba going crazy as if it’s Game 7, instead of another painful loss. And we have the guys in the booth celebrating strikeouts instead of victories. Generation YES has officially poisoned the Bombers, elevating individual achievement over team effort. That’s what losing, small-market teams like the Washington Nationals do. They promote personalities over the bottom line because it’s the only way to sell their product. YES, it really has come to this.

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• Memo to Girardi: A-Rod wrote the book on A-Rod. Not Selena Roberts. Yankee Universe takes glee in its poor opening sales. Okay. But the focus (and rage) should be on the fact that (unnamed) Yankee players actually contributed to this book. Does this team really think so little of its biggest star?

• Why is it that every year it comes to this? Girardi strategically gets himself thrown out of a game and supposedly lights a fire under his team. Why isn’t the fire lit on Opening Day?

• A rain delay helps the new stadium continue to alienate its fan base. Posada is injured on a questionable playing field. Why couldn’t they put a roof on the greatest stadium in baseball?

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Do yourself a favor and just accept all the new allegations (yes, even the absurd ‘bitch tits’) as the truth. If you’re a Yankee fan, none of this matters much any longer. You only care about one thing - can a clean A-Rod be as good as a dirty one? And if not, would you rather have the dirty one on your team? (Think Bonds in San Francisco.)

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• If it truly is the A-Rod of stadiums, then this slashing of ticket prices is like a meaningless Rodriguez home run in the late innings. Lowering prices from $2,500 to $1,250 helps who exactly?

•  If a pitcher suddenly loses velocity and becomes a shell of his former self, why do we think that throwing in the eighth inning will cure him? Shouldn’t we, in the post-Mitchell Report era, at least consider that he could have been juicing? That’s what we do with sluggers who suddenly stop hitting.

•  It is nearly May and the Yankees will end it exactly where they ended last season - in third place. The popular belief now is that A-Rod is going to be the savior. But we’ve heard that one every season and we no longer believe it.

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Bradford Campeau-Laurion thinks it’s okay to urinate during “God Bless America” at Yankee Stadium. And he’s right - as long as he’s not doing it in a public bathroom. See, getting up and walking to a proper urinal during “God Bless America” is a punishable crime against Yankee Stadium. In fact, it violates one of the Ten Yankee Commandments: ‘Thou Shall Not Desire To Urinate During Renditions Of ‘God Bless America’, ‘Enter Sandman’, and ‘Cotton-Eyed Joe'’. How could Bradford think that his bursting, beer-bloated bladder was more important than standing honorably by as that scratchy, worn-out 45 of cackling Kate Smith blared over the loudspeakers, filling every Yankee fan with an abundance of pride in stars and stripes and pinstripes? Not only is this lawsuit bogus, Mr. Campeau-Laurion deserves the ultimate pinstriped punishment: for his one-man war on Yankee tradition, honor, and common sense he must be banned for life from The Stadium.

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No offense to Joba. He is certainly a talent and could be a great player for years to come. But never has one Yankee generated so much off-the-field hype while doing so little on it. It’s part of what is wrong with the Bombers in Generation YES. The network fed into the fan hype and hysteria from the get go and produced that terrible, ostentatious interview show - filled with blubbering schoolteachers and ex-girlfriends. And every time he throws a pitch, YES broadcasters are right there to give us the radar-gun reading. As if he’s the only guy in baseball that can throw 98 mph! But that’s the problem: it’s all moving too fast. Yankee Legends are made in October, not the regular season. On this scale, Joba’s bug episode is his defining Yankeeography Moment thus far. And that’s not good news.

So here’s an idea: give the kid some breathing room and let his talent (not the hype) dictate his place in Yankee lore.

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