Alex Rodriguez to have surgery, out two months plus

It’s been a rough year so far from Alex Rodriguez, who has had to endure the flap of his admission of performance enhancing drug use a few years back as well as a torn labrum.  Initially, ‘A-Rod’ had planned to play with the pain but on Sunday announced that he had opted for surgery.   He’ll go under the knife on Monday and will need six to nine weeks to recover.

The procedure will be performed by Dr. Marc Philippon at the Steadman-Hawkins Clinic in Vail, Colorado.  It’s essentially ‘arthroscopic hip surgery’ and is only a short term fix for ‘A-Rod’s’ hip problems.  He’ll need a more invasive procedure after the season that will require over three months rehab.  That’s assuming there aren’t any additional setbacks and he can play the entire season.

Dr. Philippon spoke to reporters from Colorado, and was optimistic that Rodriguez’s recovery will be at the short end of the spectrum, meaning closer to six weeks than nine weeks.  He’s also confident that he’ll make it through the season:

"I firmly believe this approach will be successful and allow Alex to return.  We've had very good success with this approach. Short term, we feel the risk is very limited that he will re-tear his labrum during that six-, seven-month period

"Because of all the test findings, analysis, the function of Alex, I feel it's in his best interest to have his labrum repaired, remove part of his impingement and therefore stabilize his labrum. The goal here is to allow Alex to rehab rapidly in a safe manner."

"We'll keep Alex with us in Colorado certainly for the first few weeks. The main reason being we're going to put him on the fast track so we will be very aggressive on his rehab. We'll check on Alex twice a day."

Yankees GM Brian Cashman expects Rodriguez back sometime in May, and says that he’s happy that his high priced superstar is happy with the decision to undergo the procedure:

"When it first happened, he said he was 'bummed.' That was the exact word. Alex texted me and he was really positive. He is excited. This is what he wanted to do."

‘A-Rod’ will be able to begin swinging a bat as soon as seven days after the surgery.  Yankees captain Derek Jeter shared his thoughts on the news:

"It's better news than some of the reports. It's good for him. He can get that out of the way and hopefully get back to us soon. We can't sit around and wait for him to come back. You've got to go out there and play. That's what good teams are about. It's more than one person."

Outfielder Johnny Damon concurred:

"Now we know that we're going to lose him for a little bit of time. I think it's better to get it out of the way, especially since he's going to be in New York for eight more years after this year. So you might as well take care of it."