All right, cards on the table. Anyone who knows me knows I am a die-hard Red Sox fan who has, on more than one occasion, been part of the booing crowd when A-Rod steps to the plate at Fenway Park. The last time I saw him at Fenway was after the Madonna affair hit the media and I admit I thoroughly enjoyed the group of men who sang Madonna songs about Kabbalah very loudly behind me in the bleachers every time A-Rod was within earshot.
So with that bias firmly established, I eagerly anticipated his press conference yesterday, particularly when I heard he had hired a west coast based agency to help him prepare for the media. Given the amount of time he had and the fact that he had help, I was surprised he didn't fare better. When you look at just a few of the stories posted this morning, including USA Today and the Washington Post, he hasn't earned much sympathy and seems to be veering toward increasing the scorn many have had for him.
When we train executives to handle interviews or press conferences effectively, we use a scorecard to determine how they do during mock interview sessions. Let's apply this to A-Rod's performance yesterday and see how he did:
Anchor Points: We train people to keep a short media session like this focused on the 2-3 major points they want to convey. A-Rod gets an "e" for effort for sticking to his messages: I was young and stupid; my even dumber cousin and I did this together, not knowing it was wrong; my teammates, the mighty Yankees, are all supporting me. Grade: B
Sound-bites: My two favorite were "I have to take my medicine" (no, A-Rod, you already did; that's why you're here facing the music, a better sound-bite for the situation); and "I knew it wasn't tic-tacs" when asked whether he realized he was taking illegal substances. Not the quotes you want under your picture. Grade: D
Anecdotes/analogies: The Dumb and Dumber story about him and his cousin was the only one here and it didn't work for me. Grade: D
Pace: He read haltingly, in my view. It looked like he hadn't seen his script before in some spots. The words did not seem like his own words. In my humble opinion, he would have been better served with a shorter statement that he could memorize or, at least, be able to look up more as he consulted a few notes on a card. Grade: C
Pausing: Michael McCarthy of USA Today described perfectly the dramatic pause that would not earn him an Oscar:
It was either a genuine moment by Alex Rodriguez during his closely watched press conference Tuesday, or the most epically bad pause acting since William Shatner chewed the scenery on Star Trek.
Watching him look around and down and drinking water, trying desperately to whip up some tears like Dewey on "Malcolm in the Middle" before he fake-choked out "thank you" was nothing short of ludicrous and contrived. Grade: F
Answer and Stop: He did this well, helped by his agency's insistence that there be no followup questions and that each journalist could only ask one question. I don't know if they were able to stack the room with enough friendlies to keep the media crowd from teaming up with their questions. He dodged questions fairly well, stumbling a few times when it was clear he didn't have a good prepared answer. The "tic-tac" comment was the result of one of these. Grade B
Conciseness: See above regarding the one-question limit. But he was concise. Andy Pettitte had to endure a full hour of questions and seems to have fared better afterward. Perhaps conciseness and control over questions wasn't A-Rod's friend yesterday. Grade: B
Bridging: This measures his ability to bridge away from tough questions to safer ground. Bridging is about keeping focus on the messages you want to convey. It is not an excuse for deliberate obfuscation. If you aren't going to answer a question, it's always better to say, "I'm not going to answer that" then to dodge the question or bridge away, leaving the reporter who cannot follow up frustrated. He was trained to dodge, but, I don't believe, to bridge effectively. Grade: C
Overall Grade: C-
What is irritating me is that Mike & Mike on ESPN are on the air right now laying a lot of blame on "that PR firm" he hired and saying A-Rod shouldn't pay them and they shouldn't list their work with A-Rod on the cover page of their website.
Was he over-handled? Yes. Is he still so "young and stupid" that he isn't capable of deciding how to present himself, as Andy Pettitte did before him? I don't think so. So don't let A-Rod blame the PR people, as I'm sure their clients had an approach in mind and their job was to support that decision. But you might want to get A-Rod some acting coaching if he's supposed to present with sincerity and remorse.
