Did Madonna Injure A-Rod?

Did Madonna Injure A-Rod? | Nicole Gives Birth Sans Kids; Taking Beatles to Cleaners; Bard Biz

Let’s start an urban legend. This one is about Madonna and Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez.

Much has been made of the Madonna-A-Rod timeline. Here it is: A-Rod attended Madonna’s Kabbalah/Malawi fundraiser on Feb. 6 in New York sponsored by Gucci. Rodriguez is in plenty of the pictures. His “date” was not wife Cynthia, who was seven months pregnant. It was his shared manager with Madonna, Guy Oseary. Rodriguez’s picture was taken with fellow Kabbalah follower, Demi Moore.

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Guy Ritchie, Madonna’s husband, stayed home. He also stayed away from Madonna’s March induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York. She didn’t even mention him in her long, windy, self-congratulatory speech.

A-Rod’s second child, Ella, was born April 21 in Miami. He flew down, arrived 10 minutes after her birth, looked at her, and headed back to New York.

It’s unclear where he was between the 22nd and the 24th, when he missed three games in Chicago against the White Sox. During that time, Madonna premiered her documentary about Malawi with loads of Kabbalah propaganda on April 23 at the Tribeca Film Festival. A-Rod rejoined the Yankees on April 25 in Cleveland.

Then Rodriguez attended Madonna’s half-hour promotional show at the Roseland Ballroom in New York on April 30.

But no one’s mentioned that just the day before, April 29, the Yankees placed A-Rod on the 15-day disabled list. It was the first time he’d been on such a list since the year 2000.

Also on April 29: Ritchie took the kids to the “Speed Racer” premiere in London.

On the night of Madonna’s show, where Ritchie was absent, the Yanks without A-Rod lost to the Tigers 6-2.

What was A-Rod’s injury? A grade 2 groin pull that occurred during a game against Baltimore on the 20th. He went back to work, but exacerbated the injury to the point where he couldn’t play. It was so bad that Rodriguez actually didn’t rejoin the team until May 20, when the Yanks lost to Baltimore 12-1.

That’s a long time for a superstar of Rodriguez’s caliber to be out of commission. Indeed, when A-Rod was injured, manager Joe Girardi was quoted in several interviews saying that he was “surprised to learn the strain was so severe.”

In the midst of all this, as I reported Monday, Rodriguez managed to rent himself a secret apartment in the condos above the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Columbus Circle. It was there that he and Madonna may have met to discuss Kabbalah or baseball or the song choices for Madonna’s upcoming tour.

What’s interesting about all that is Madonna moved her base of operations from London to New York for this “Sweet and Sticky Tour,” opting to rehearse every day in Brooklyn, of all places. This is a little odd, considering the tour begins in Great Britain on Aug. 23 and doesn’t come to America until Oct. 4 at the New Jersey Meadowlands.

According to her Web site, Madonna.com, there are plenty of tickets available in most major American cities, including New York and Boston. Apparently, all this publicity — a lot of which this reporter admittedly thought was being generated to sell tickets — has not helped much at all.

In the meantime, we can only wonder: was A-Rod’s injury somehow related to his friendship with Madonna? Was it really cool to stay out late and attend the singer’s very short show at Roseland one day after going on the disabled list? And if he was so disabled, wouldn’t he have wanted to see his 10-day-old daughter rather than jockey with fans to see Madonna promote her new album?

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