Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez ends long home run drought with long HR

12:12 AM ET

NEW YORK — It had been a considerable amount of time since Alex Rodriguez last hit a home run at Yankee Stadium. In fact, you could have come to 38 home games between his last one, on April 17 against his former team, the Seattle Mariners, and the one he hit in the second inning Monday night against the Baltimore Orioles. More than three months had passed in between. Ninety-one home at-bats, which matches the numbers of days in between “A-Bombs from A-Rod.” A lot of duds in-between.

Over the course of those three-months-and-a-day, Rodriguez lost half his job as the everyday DH, his role reduced to that of a $21 million platoon player against left-handed starters. New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi wouldn’t call it a demotion, but there was no other way to look at it, and if there was any question of how much it stung, all you had to do was watch A-Rod taking grounders at first base, something he was loath to do last year, to know.

So Rodriguez could be forgiven for taking a moment to admire his handiwork after the ball left his bat and rose in a high arc toward the left-field seats because in truth, the guy might have forgotten what such a sight truly looked like. He had hit other home runs, of course, all in opposing ballparks, but even the last one was precisely a month in his rear-view mirror, having come in a game against the Twins in Minneapolis on June 18.

And it should come as no surprise that when asked to choose a word to describe his emotions — Relief? Satisfaction? Exhilaration? — the word he chose was “surprise.”

“I haven’t hit a ball like that in a long time,” he said. “It certainly felt good. A lot of times you come out and do work and you don’t get results; you may get a walk or a base hit. But to get a ball in the air feels really good.”

Alex Rodriguez swatted his first home run in a month on Monday, surely a welcome sight for the Yankees. “That was one of the best swings I’ve seen him take in a while,” teammate Brian McCann said. Bill Kostroun/AP

A-Rod had done his work before the game, performing a hitting drill that was commonplace around here when Kevin Long was the hitting coach and …

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