On Nov. 15, after attending his own charity poker tournament in Manhattan, he canceled on a major fundraiser the next night at the Yogi Berra Museum in Little Falls, N.J. According to a person in the Rodriguez camp who spoke on condition of anonymity, A-Rod's mother, Lourdes, had suddenly been hospitalized -- certainly a legitimate excuse and far better than the reason David Wright's people gave for him not showing. (Wright had been inadvertently double-booked that night.)

But Wright is a Met, A-Rod a Yankee, and because he has a history around town of blowing off events (including one of Torre's last year), because the call to the museum to cancel was made not by Rodriguez but by one of his employees, because there was an A-Rod sighting Nov. 17 at courtside of the Knicks-Heat game in Miami, the museum people and the Berra family and even the Yankees' president, Randy Levine, were said to be in a snit, with the impression that A-Rod too often gives: He just doesn't get it.