You wouldn’t have known that if you read the back cover of the Post this morning, which features a photograph of Alex Rodriguez sitting in the dugout. The headline? “May-Rod.” Yeah, I’m a dummy if I expect anything but shamelessness from a rag that traffics in human misery. Maybe it is the heat–and it is hotter’n’July in New York right now–but I’m just disgusted.

Vic Ziegel suggests his paper, The Daily News, isn’t much better:

Alex Rodriguez is the best player in the game. Okay, that was easy. There is no other candidate. When he makes it to the Hall of Fame, they will add a penthouse for him.

He is six days past his 32nd birthday, still a child in Yankee years, and is already collecting the kinds of numbers that will one day make Babe Ruth look like Ruth Babe.

A-Rod must be the best because no one – not the Babe, who was bigger than life, or the Mighty Casey, a poem’s cleanup hitter, or Barry Bonds, the body that ate Pittsburgh – can come close to A-Rod’s latest impressive headline. He was the big story and big picture on Page 1 of this newspaper yesterday. This is why: he didn’t hit a home run the night before. Hasn’t hit a home run, in fact, since the middle of last week. And didn’t manage to hit one last night in the Yanks’ 8-1 win over the White Sox. The Yankees tagged 13 homers in those two wins. None of them came off Rodriguez’s bat. Not one, nada. When was the last time a player ever made it to Page 1 for committing the sin of not hitting a home run? Never is a good guess.

I realize I’m adding to the sideshow by evening mentioning it (guilty), so let’s move on. The Yanks beat the White Sox about the face and neck last night by the tune of 8-1. Here is the real story: New York is now just two games behind Cleveland in the wildcard standings. Andy Pettitte labored early in the game but “grinded it out” and got plenty of run support: Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Robinson Cano, and everybody’s All-American, Shelley Duncan, all homered.

It was another tough night for White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, who saw his pitcher Charlie Haeger tossed in the eighth inning for hitting Cano with a knuckle ball:

“The only thing I wish is Major League Baseball looks at this kind of stuff and sees what’s really going on out there,” Guillen said. “The umpire has the right to call anything, but you have to have a little bit of common sense about baseball to do that. I’ve never seen anyone try and get a point across with a knuckleball.

“You can’t win. You’re a baseball employee … a baseball bitch — at least I am.”

Good ol’ Ozzie. Always good for a quote. Finally, here is something that is sure to generate some conversation. According to Fortune magazine, the YES Network is for sale. That was quick, huh?