NOTHING BUT THE BEST.(The Talk of the Town)

At six minutes past noon last Tuesday, one of the four hundred or so reporters, columnists, and photographers who had assembled in the basement of Yankee Stadium took a cell-phone call, then quickly hung up. "A-Rod is in the building," she said, to no one in particular. A man standing behind her pulled out his own phone and dialled. "We just heard that A-Rod is in the building," he said. And so began the most exhaustively chronicled player introduction in the history of baseball. Within a few minutes, Rick Cerrone, the Yankees' media rep, had assumed podium position to explain the order of operations for "the formal portion of the program"--speeches, the obligatory donning of the pinstripes, the photo op. It was a "monumental day," the Yankees' president, Randy Levine, announced--the beginning of a "new history."

A-Rod is, of course, Alex Rodriguez, baseball's most highly paid player and its best shortstop--and the Yankees' new third baseman, thanks to a surprise trade and defensive realignment that seems to have been orchestrated as much by Rodriguez's agent, Scott Boras, as by either of the teams (the Yankees and the Texas Rangers) involved. Since 1996, when Nike first sent Rodriguez a pair of cleats embroidered with the hip-hop-inspired abbreviation of his name, "A-Rod" has come to supplant Alex in much the same way that "J. Lo" has displaced Jennifer. (Rodriguez's moniker, incidentally, predates Lopez's by several years.)

George Steinbrenner likened his acquisition of A-Rod to the signing, in 1976, of another star with a famous nickname, Reggie Jackson, a.k.a. Mr. October, who was on hand at the Stadium last week, seated with the other dignitaries. But the media had an earlier, more substantial precedent in mind. As one of Wednesday's twenty-one A-Rod-related stories in the Post began, "The press conference to introduce Alex Rodriguez as a Yankee was of Babe Ruth proportions." Newsday promised "Babe Ruth, the sequel."

The parallels are numerous. For the Rangers, A-Rod wore the number three--the same number worn by the Babe in New York. (The Yankees have long since retired No. 3, and so Rodriguez will wear No. 13 here.) A-Rod, who is just twenty-eight years old, is also well positioned to go after Ruth's career homerun total of 714. Most important, though, A-Rod's arrival marks a snub of Ruthian magnitude to the rival Boston Red Sox, who tried and failed to land Rodriguez in a blockbuster trade less than two months ago, and whose owner, John Henry, used the occasion of the Yankees' coup last ...