By Art Spander
Special to NewsdayOAKLAND, Calif. -- In the clubhouse Saturday before the Athletics hosted the Tampa Bay Rays, Oakland pitcher Dallas Braden signed a couple of dozen photo cards as requested by the team public relations department. A couple of hours later, he figuratively signed off over his verbal battle with the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez.
"It's a done deal,'' Braden insisted, "a dead topic.''
A few days earlier, Braden again took some verbal pokes at A-Rod and - responding to an interviewer's question - implied that he might want to take a few actual ones the next time they meet.
It all stemmed from the April 22 game at Oakland. Almost all the way to third after a foul ball by Robinson Cano, Rodriguez returned to first by cutting directly across the diamond, stepping on the mound and breaking one of baseball's unwritten rules -- at least in Braden's mind.
Braden -- who grew up in Stockton, maybe 80 miles east of the Bay Area, where he ran with a tough crowd -- yelled at A-Rod and later told the media, "That's my pitcher's mound. If he wants to run across the mound, tell him to do laps in the bullpen.''
Rodriguez said he wasn't aware of the unwritten rule and was surprised that someone with so few career victories (17-23 in his fourth major-league season) would challenge him.
Braden, 26, received a supportive text message from the Blue Jays' Dana Eveland, a former A's teammate, and when Braden walked onto the field a week ago in St. Petersburg, Fla., several Rays pitchers applauded the lefthander.
When asked Wednesday about Rodriguez's put-down, Braden said, "I was always told if you give a fool enough rope, he'll hang himself, and with those comments, he had all the rope that was needed. No. 2, I didn't know there was a criteria in order to compete against A-Rod.''
"It was nothing I didn't say the first day," Braden said Saturday. "It just happened to come out two weeks later, so it just sort of rekindled everything."
On Wednesday, when asked if he would throw punches next time, Braden said: "There are things that are going to have to happen. Out of respect to my teammates. Out of respect to the game. We don't do much talking in the 209 [Stockton's area code].''
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