Alex Rodriguez

Sunday night games on ESPN are bound to be a roller coaster ride. Tonight was no exception for the New York Yankees.

It all started when starting pitcher A.J.

In a strange turn of events, an unknown source reports that Joe Buck paid off Lance Berkman.  The bounty was placed to hit a line drive off Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez while the superstar wasn't paying attention.

Buck, known by many as a Yankee hater, allegedly told the struggling Berkman he would give him $75,000 if he hit a screaming line drive that hit A-Rod, while Buck would distract A-Rod by talking to him. Rodriguez is now considered day-to-day. 

Berkman, as of August 6th, is 2-for-19 in five games. 

The Boston Red Sox disabled list is long, but even crippled, this is a darn good ball club.

Winning the first game against the Yankees proves the Red Sox are still in the mix in the AL East.

Boston’s starting rotation is now all active and healthy, and they are ridiculously good.

Red Sox ace Josh Beckett's being back is huge because his passion and fiery attitude demand a lot of respect. Clearly, Beckett is the leader of the staff and his absence was apparent.

As Alex Rodriguez rounded the bases for the 600th time in the major leagues, he joined Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr., Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds as the only players to reach that plateau. 

At the age of 35, media members quickly touted A-Rod for being the youngest player in history to break 600.  Most people began to speculate when, not if, he will break Barry Bonds' record of 762 round trippers.

With only a few more months to go before a champion is crowned, the 2010 season is winding down. As always, there are those players who have outplayed their current contract and those players who haven't lived up to the millions of dollars that they are being paid.

Problems with age, injuries, and plain-old ineffectiveness are some reasons why these players made the list. It may not be fair to pick on someone who has battled injuries, but the club still has to pay the salary regardless if they are hurt or not. 

Alex Rodriguez joined an elite group of men who have hit 600 in baseball history. Congratulations A-Rod!

Unfortunately, Shaun Marcum joined an exclusive group as well. For every 600th home run that's hit, someone has to serve it up. Here are the men who became famous by throwing the ball that ended up in Cooperstown.

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Celebrity gossip reporter, Perez Hilton, posted on his website that Alex Rodriguez broke a home run world record on Wednesday afternoon. (Sorry, I thought Perez Hilton breaking the A-Rod story is funnier and more entertaining then Peter Gammons doing so.)

For just about two weeks I read an article every day about how people didn’t care about Alex Rodriguez's quest for 600 home runs because he was a cheater (except, of course, the newspapers cared enough to remind me every day).

Is 600 a big deal?

That was the question posed by ESPN's morning edition of SportsCenter the day following Alex Rodriguez's historic home run.  Performance enhancing drugs or not, 600 home runs by one individual player most certainly is a big deal. 

Of the thousands of players to play the game, Alex Rodriguez is only the seventh player to accumulate that many home runs.  That's a smaller percentage of players than have recorded 3,000 hits, won triple crowns, or pitched perfect games.