Bob Cook

It’s hard to imagine that a world-class athlete and narcissist such as Alex Rodriguez is going to be affected negatively by minor distractions such as his divorce and the breathless gossip of his alleged relationship with Madonna.

Nor will the Yankees, a club long used to a circus inside and outside the locker room, get caught up in all the tabloid excitement. After all, the Yankees have had man-about-town Derek Jeter on the roster for years, in 1954 absorbed the excitement of Joe DiMaggio stopping by with new wife Marilyn Monroe, and in 1973 endured the oddity of pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich trading to the other his wife, kids and dog.

But one aspect of Rodriguez’s personal upheaval could throw off the Yankees even further than Hank Steinbrenner feels they already have been, given their third-place status. That would be Rodriguez’s reported embrace of Madonna’s Kabbalah, the quasi-religion that appears to be vacuuming up whatever Hollywood celebrities didn’t convert to Scientology.

Teammates can take an athlete’s domestic troubles, and they can handle an athlete’s faith. But if a teammate gets weird about religion, or just gets a weird religion — well, the only worse fate for locker-room harmony would be the installation of Sammy Sosa’s old boom box.

On Monday, Cynthia Rodriguez filed for divorce from Alex, claiming he had “emotionally abandoned his wife and children and has left her with no choice but to divorce him.” She copped that line from Steinbrenner’s reaction after Rodriguez and then-agent Scott Boras pulled the stunt of announcing during the eighth and next-to-last inning of last year’s World Series that the slugger would opt out of his contract.

But while Steinbrenner took Rodriguez back, it doesn’t look so good with Cynthia. No matter. The evidence shows that emotionally abandoning his wife has been good for Rodriguez’s game.

Video   A-Rod's wife files for divorce July 7: Alex Rodriguez's wife, Cynthia, has filed for divorce from the Yankee's slugger. NBC Sports

After the New York Post on May 30, 2007, ran a picture of Rodriguez entering a Toronto strip club with what the paper demurely called a “tight-bodied, bleach-blonde gal pal” (later identified as a Las Vegas exotic dancer), Rodriguez broke out of a slump. He raised his batting average from .292 to .306, his on-base percentage from .386 to .400, and his slugging percentage from .641 to .662, all in the space of a week as he catapulted himself to an American League MVP award.

In the six games after Us magazine on July 1 reported Rodriguez’s alleged dalliance with Madonna, at 49 14 years older than Cynthia and 17 years older than Alex, the man they call A-Rod has hit .333, had an on-base percentage of .440 and a slugging percentage of .667. With a big series against Tampa Bay (boy, it’s still weird to type those words) coming up, the divorce papers could send Rodriguez on an even bigger tear.

Special feature Athletes and celebs hook up Slideshow: The stars linked to A-Rod and others in sports. NBCSports.com

So his trainer and godfather to his two children tells the New York Post Rodriguez is “infatuated with the fact that he’s an icon instead of realizing what’s important, which is family and truth.” Apparently he was the last to get the memo that Rodriguez is all about being an icon.

When Rodriguez last year led fan All-Star voting for the first time in his career, he talked about it as having reached an important career goal. Texas Rangers teammates nicknamed Rodriguez “the Cooler” because teams cooled off after he arrived, while those Rangers also resented Rodriguez thinking of them as his backup band in “Alex Rodriguez and the Texas Rangers.”

Jumpin’ jiminy, the man gave his two daughters his first name — Alexander — as their middle name.

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