Yankees present A-Rod with real centaur in touching retirement ceremony

NEW YORK — The New York Yankees sent Alex Rodriguez into retirement Friday night with a touching and personal gift the slugger has long desired.

Minutes before the first pitch of Rodriguez’s final game in a Yankees uniform, the team presented him with a centaur, the half-human, half-horse creature that has always filled Rodriguez with wonder and delight.

“Oh, my god! No way!” Rodriguez exclaimed as soon as his gift trotted out onto the field and stood atop the pitcher’s mount, pawing at the dirt. “Seriously?! Thanks you, guys! This is the best!”

A beaming A-Rod then approached the centaur. It wagged its tail excitedly as the retiring player petted his back.

In a brief address to the Yankee Stadium crowd, Rodriguez said the gift was the greatest and most thoughtful he had ever received.

“I have to admit, I was feeling kind of unappreciated the way this wound down over the past week,” Rodriguez told the crowd. “But this? Wow. This goes above and beyond. This shows the Yankees really know me and care about me and put thought into this. I don’t know where they got a centaur, but it’s as magical as I ever imagined.”

After the ceremony ended, the centaur was led off the field and Rodriguez went to the dugout to play in the game. The man whose torso and head made up the front of the centaur was seen leaving Yankee Stadium minutes later.

“Yeah, that was me,” he said. “It’s a prank that Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi wanted to do. They hired me for 100 bucks. They’re putting the back end of the costume by A-Rod’s locker and covering it in fake blood. They’re going to tell him after the game that the centaur’s tail got stuck in a pitching machine and it was torn apart. Pretty cruel, but hey — I made 100 bucks.”