TAMPA -- They are four shy of a combined 1,100 home runs and in precisely two months, their cumulative age will be 80 years old. And at this point in their careers, neither Alex Rodriguez nor Carlos Beltran should wear any kind of glove other than batting gloves.
But given the right pitch, the New York Yankees two old men can still hit a baseball a long way, and Friday night against the Tampa Bay Rays, they demonstrated that again. A-Rod hit a two-run blast to dead center field measured at 440 feet and Beltran hit a more modest poke of 384, both off Chris Archer, who other than those two pitches was delivering probably his best performance in more than a month.