Alex Rodriguez tied Willie Mays with 660 Home Runs Last Night

We were telling a friend at work on Friday afternoon that this was going to be the weekend that Alex Rodriguez met Willie Mays at that legendary, iconic number of 660 career home runs.

It was always meant to go down at Fenway Park, since the day Alex Rodriguez was born.

When it happened last night, there was no ESPN Alert text (come to think of it, I don’t get those anymore); there was hardly the tweets or notifications or headline news alerts to my phone.

It was just another quiet event that seemed largely passed over in baseball. We won’t be in silence about it here. It’s a milestone.

What Rodriguez has done this season has been nothing short of impressive. He’s hit six home runs. It was a pinch-hit home run off Junichi Tazawa; typically a pretty tough righty to go yard off of. It tied the game the Yankees eventually won 3-2.

Maybe the bigger milestone is A-Rod actually passing Mays. Maybe that will bring about more raucous and noise.

We’re not sure exactly how to feel about Rodriguez. How many of those home runs were steroid-aided and how does it all compare and matter? We’ll never have the right answer. But he still reached a number that sticks in your mind forever, and that’s a lot of trips around the bases no matter how you arrive at it.

It deserves recognition of some sort.