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NASHVILLE – On the first official day of the Winter Meetings, Alex Rodriguez emerged as the most discussed player at the cavernous Opryland Hotel. It wasn’t for a good reason. Rodriguez has a tear in his left hip that will require surgery, meaning he will miss part of the 2013 season. The New York Post first reported the Rodriguez news while adding that it’s not the right hip previously operated on in 2009.

Rodriguez injured the hip before the postseason, a dismal stretch in which he went 3-for-25 with no extra-base hits and 12 strikeouts. The hip problem could help explain why Rodriguez looked lost at the plate and showed no power in the playoffs. The Yankees had hoped that Rodriguez would return as a much more productive hitter, but now they will have to wait and see

It was bold, gutsy and daring. When Joe Girardi decided to use Raul Ibanez as a pinch-hitter for Alex Rodriguez in the ninth inning on Wednesday night, it was one of the more delicate decisions he has made as a manager. It was also one of the smartest decisions he has made.

Even before Ibanez drilled a game-tying homer off Jim Johnson and a game-winning homer off Brian Matusz in the 12^th inning, inserting Ibanez for Rodriguez was the proper move. Even if Ibanez had made an out and the Yankees had lost to the Orioles, I believe Girardi did the right thing. The manager’s job is to give his team the best chance to win. That’s what Girardi did.

Because Ibanez had a dream of a postseason game, the Yankees defeated the Orioles, 3-2, in Game 3 of the American League Division

Before Alex Rodriguez took his first swing against the Orioles in the American League Division Series, I exchanged text messages with an AL scout. I asked the scout for his evaluation of Rodriguez, who had been repeatedly beat on fastballs as he faltered at the end of the regular season. His response was blunt.

“A-Rod will only show up if the pen does not have good stuff,” the scout wrote.

In one brief and damning sentence, the scout gave an accurate appraisal of what has happened in the first two games of the best-of-five series. While Rodriguez is 1-for-9 with five strikeouts overall, he is 0-for-4 with four strikeouts against Baltimore’s relievers. He is 0-for-2 off Darren O’Day and 0-for-2 off Jim Johnson.

With each unproductive at-bat by Rodriguez, the questions

CINCINNATI -- Soon after Alex Rodriguez cruised into the Great American Ball Park on Tuesday afternoon he had a mission. Rodriguez needed to locate one of his Yankee teammates and needed to have a conversation about what happened on Monday night. Rodriguez needed to find Boone Logan.

Logan had a miserable one-pitch outing when the Yankees defeated the Reds, 5-3, in the series opener on Monday. Summoned to oppose the left-handed hitting Joey Votto in the ninth inning, Logan drilled Votto with his first pitch. That was the end of Logan’s night. One pitch, one shabby fastball, and the Yankees needed Mariano Rivera to rescue them.

Since Logan is the only lefty in the bullpen, he needs to be adept at one thing: retiring left-handed hitters. But Logan has been disappointing in his critical

The detailed conversations took place a few times every day. The words were exchanged in the batting cage, in the dugout, in the clubhouse and in front of a computer. Again and again, the two men discussed how to eradicate a problem that has been bothering both of them.

Alex Rodriguez and Kevin Long were the two Yankees who have had these talks and who have shared concern for Rodriguez’s vanishing act as a hitter. After Rodriguez dominated pitchers during the first three weeks of the season, he plummeted into a deep drought. How, Long wondered, could he help get Rodriguez back to being a prolific hitter?

Long determined the cause of Rodriguez’s struggles, detecting that the third baseman hadn’t been using the lower half of his body to ignite his swing. Rodriguez called

Willie Mays knows what it is like to wait a little while to climb from 599 homers to 600 in his career, knows what it is like to feel the way Alex Rodriguez is feeling. It took Mays 21 at-bats to collect that elusive homer and reach the milestone almost 40 years ago. Rodriguez, who is stuck on 599, hasn’t homered in 21 at-bats.

“The pressure was there,” Mays said. “You’re talking about him getting 600 right now? The pressure is there. It’s just that, every day he doesn’t hit it, they want to ask him why you didn’t hit it today. It’s one of those types of things.”

Once Rodriguez tied Mays for the longest homerless streak between 599 and 600, I decided to call Mays on Wednesday. I have interviewed Mays by telephone a few times. He

OAKLAND – If Alex Rodriguez had squinted or adjusted one finger on his bat before hammering a grand slam on Tuesday night, I would have seen it. That is how close I was to the plate during the third inning at the Oakland Coliseum. If there was an on deck circle behind the on deck circle, that would have been my neighborhood.

In two decades of covering baseball, I have been fortunate enough to have some terrific views from several press boxes. But I’ve never had a more prime location than the one I have enjoyed during the series between the Yankees and the Athletics. I never thought that standing on a pile of television cable wires and wedging between two camera operators would be so memorable.

While standing about 20 feet from the first base dugout for an inning in each game,