Alex Rodriguez reportedly flirted with fans, asked for number during playoff game

The 2012 playoffs could very well be the downfall of Alex Rodriguez’s career. At age 37, the decline was bound to come sooner rather than later. A-Rod has been a nonfactor in the postseason as he is hitting .130, has already been benched and watched Raul Ibanez become a hero while pinch-hitting for him over the weekend. Now, rumors are surfacing that his head hasn’t even been in the game.

A story in the NY Post on Tuesday claims A-Rod was flirting with a couple of female fans in the stands during Game 1 of the ALCS after he was replaced in the bottom of the eighth — with his team trailing.

“I watched him flirt with two admittedly very cute young women nearby,” a witness reportedly told the Post.

Obviously flirting is a very loose term, but the witness claims A-Rod had the Yankees ball boy toss the ladies a baseball with a message written on it asking for their numbers.

“Alex was holding a pen and wrote a note on a ball which was thrown at the women by a ball boy,’’ the witness said. “The girls, who had already caught two balls, seemed bemused at first and tried to hand the ball to another fan, but other fans noticed the note on it and yelled at them to read it.

“The note asked them to write their phone numbers on the ball and throw it back.”

One of the girls supposedly wrote her number on it and tossed it back to Rodriguez, who smiled at her before watching Ibanez blast a pinch-hit home run. For what it’s worth, the source claimed the flirting stopped once Derek Jeter got hurt.

The suggestion that a star like A-Rod was doing all this makes it more of a big deal than if a utility man was doing it, but is any flirtation with the fans during an ALCS game where your team is trailing really harmless? If you ask me, this is just another example of how disengaged A-Rod has become.