Alex Rodriguez

NEW YORK -- Alex Rodriguez said that he desperately wanted his bases-loaded moment in the seventh, that he would have paid millions for his chance to win the division series with one swing, and he spoke with the credibility of a superstar who had already paraded under a ticker-tape rain.

"A dream at bat," Rodriguez said of his fateful encounter with a Detroit Tigers reliever named Joaquin Benoit, who came to the mound wearing a bandage on his cheek the size of the Yankee Stadium tarp.

But Girardi couldn't strip the pitcher of his powers, or of his ability to throw an 86-mph splitter on a 1-2 count that would reduce A-Rod to a flailing Game 5 mess and, ultimately, leave him once again as the face of a first-round flameout, the master of another Yankee disaster.

"You relish those opportunities," Rodriguez said after Tigers 3, Yankees 2 sent the Central Division underdogs to Texas and the league championship series and sent the defanged beast of the AL East freefalling into a most unforgiving winter.

A-Rod was wearing a golf visor at his locker, though he was in no mood to book his first offseason tee time. "The irony is I was waiting for that at-bat all series," he said. "I felt like I never really had a situation to really make a really big difference, and that was the one. And I came up short."

By the time Rodriguez faced Jose Valverde with two outs in the ninth and nobody on, everyone in the house -- including A-Rod -- knew the endgame. One of the greatest sluggers of them all made the final out on a whiff in Texas last year, and he would make the final out on a whiff in the Bronx this year.

And after it was over, Rodriguez took on all comers at his corner locker, gracefully and graciously fielding question after question about a .111 batting average posted five years after he hit .071 in another division series loss to Detroit. At least this time he didn't bat eighth.

Alex Rodriguez hit a paltry .111 in the Yankees' ALDS loss to the Tigers."It's devastating," the third baseman said. "This one is going to hurt for a long time. ... I'll be 50 and this will still hurt."

In the heat of a full-blown catharsis, Rodriguez even made this confession: "I still lose sleep over 2004." He was talking about the four straight ALCS losses to the Red Sox, of course. He was the face of that one, too.

Only the Yankee fan base shouldn't come away from this series wondering whether Rodriguez choked (he didn't), or whether he is doomed to keep treating the postseason the way Greg Norman used to treat Sundays at Augusta National (he won't).

Rodriguez did win a liberating championship in 2009, and did so as a driver instead of a passenger, and that cannot be taken from him.

But the fan base should be afraid -- very, very afraid -- that what everyone saw Thursday night in the Bronx was the beginning of A-Rod's end as a dynamic offensive force.

Listen, he was hardly the lone Yankee to blame on this bitter night. Ivan Nova surrendered the back-to-back first-inning homers before getting hurt. CC Sabathia didn't come through out of the pen, just like he didn't come through in his Game 3 start. Derek Jeter struck out eight times in the series, Nick Swisher didn't deliver when he had to, again, and Girardi never should've thrown Luis Ayala out there at the end of Game 2.

The Yankees' most important player, Mariano Rivera, threw eight pitches -- all for strikes -- in five games. That about said it all.

As a team, the Yanks just weren't good enough to get to the second round. Rodriguez is their biggest name and highest-paid player, and it seems every defining October moment since 2004 has involved an A-Rod at-bat.