Another day, another miserable performance at the plate by the man who should be one of the greatest hitters in baseball. And afterwards, there was Alex Rodriguez, trying to be the perfectly polite gentleman, talking about his failures.

That was Sunday in Anaheim, but it had been Saturday and Friday and too many days in a season that has seen his nickname contorted on the back pages of the tabloids into E-Rod and now K-Rod.

“Sure, I’m disappointed about going 1-for-15 or whatever the line may be,” he told reporters after the Yankees rescued one of a three-game set with the Angels. “But you’ve got to move on and keep grinding.”

I give him credit for being a stand-up guy. It’s not easy to face the funeral music after nearly every game. But I’m willing to give him a night off from being the perfect gentleman, willing to give him the rest of the season and the rest of his career off from trying to please everyone if it would allow him to find his inner tough guy and show everyone just how good he is.

It’s probably the only road out. He’s tried everything else, just as his manager, Joe Torre has tried everything, from resting him to hitting him second to hitting him fifth to even considering dropping him to the bottom of the line-up. But, as Torre has pointed out, it doesn’t matter where you put a slumping bat. Sooner or later, the game finds you and demands that you perform.

The Yankees have been doing pretty well without A-Rod contributing in the manner to which he should be accustomed. They’ve got a killer line-up and, with the Red Sox staggering into September, can afford to carry an anemic bat.

But sooner or later, if the Yankees want to win the World Series, they’re going to need every bat. Sooner or later in the playoffs, a big situation will find A-Rod and a game and maybe that series will depend on what he does in the situations that this year have exposed his inability to be the person he is advertised to be — the best hitter in baseball.

It’s long past the time for yet another mouthful of clichés about trying to win and working his way out. It’s time that A-Rod take a hint from a man who really was the best hitter in the game, Ted Williams.

A-Rod is a great hitter, just as Williams was. But Williams never got in his own way, as A-Rod does. He never disgorged mealy-mouthed apologies or explanations. He never let the bastards wear him down.

You have to go back to the stories of what Williams, skinny as a rail and powerful as the train that rode on it, used to do as he stood in the batting cage before a game honing his swing. Sometimes, he talked to himself, and it wasn’t a polite conversation.

“I’m Teddy bleeping Baseball,” one of Major League Baseball’s all-time leaders in profanity muttered fiercely, as the ball came in and one of the greatest swings the game has ever seen sent another ball rocketing into the ether, “greatest bleeping hitter in the major bleeping leagues.” 

It was his litany to himself, repeated through gritted teeth with every batting-practice pitch, the mantra that drove a man determined to be the best in history to heights few have ever reached. Williams had no use for anyone who questioned what he did, especially the ink-stained wretches who would gather around his locker seeking to know what went wrong during those inevitable times when the world’s greatest swing wasn’t producing at the level he expected and demanded. When they did, he’d spatter them with the same sort of language he used in the batter’s cage, only not as polite.

Keep that picture in mind and fast-forward from the 1930s, 40s and 50s to today. Substitute the greatest hitter of his — and maybe any — era with the man who would take his place, a man wearing the proud pinstripes of the New York Yankees and answering to the name of A-Rod.

You’ll never hear Alex Rodriguez turning the air purple around him in the batting cage. Nor will he ever tell those bleeping wretches who torment him to find a job that doesn’t require them to be parasitic bleeps. He won’t even take refuge in the trainer’s room after a four- or five-strikeout night punctuated with boos and catcalls, leaving the writers to find someone else to torture.

Instead, he stands there and tries to be the perfect everything as the pressure builds and he looks ever more lost.

He’s on a razor’s edge, the same edge that Chuck Knoblauch once stood on when he forgot how to throw the ball to first base, the same edge others have been on when they lost their grip on their own self-confidence and let the doubts take over.

Knoblauch was the same way when he was with the Yankees and his throwing problems began. He’d discuss it at length every night, trying to be a good guy, and every night it got worse.

Think about it. Mickey Mantle didn’t sit around trying to intellectualize a slump. Joe DiMaggio didn’t and Ted Williams didn’t and Stan Musial didn’t. They didn’t think or explain, they got mad and showed the bleepers how wrong they were.

It’s what A-Rod needs to do. He doesn’t have to curse anyone out or be a total jerk. He just needs to quit trying to please the writers and start being the player he can be; start being the greatest hitter in the game.

If he can’t do that, the Yankees are in trouble. Because sooner or later, when the situation is most dire, the game will find him. And in that moment, the game won’t care what a nice guy he is. It will only care what he does.