Did John Flaherty admit to beef with Alex Rodriguez during Yankees' broadcast?

Don't kill the messenger, but New York Yankees fans, based on commentary far and wide, do not enjoy John Flaherty on the YES broadcasts. In fact, it led to many wondering where David Cone was not too long ago.

Cone's here, but just not as often as many might prefer. Flaherty's work as a color commentator hasn't exactly enticed the audience a whole lot alongside Michael Kay's play-by-play. And when Flaherty took it up a notch on Tuesday night, his attempt to entertain still didn't land. Or it did? We're unsure. Either way, not a great sign!

As former Twin and Yankee Doug Mientkiewicz was revealed as the nightly "Name That Yankee," the YES broadcast showed a high school clip of him playing wide receiver for ... quarterback Alex Rodriguez! How about that?! World's collide! A-Rod was dropping some passes right in Dougie's bread basket. The glory days.

But Flaherty had a critique, saying he "expected more arm strength from A-Rod," and he kind of wasn't joking! At least it didn't sound like it. Michael Kay had some fun and said "you're going to get a text from A-Rod realllll soon." But then it got ... serious?

Flaherty replied, "There's one thing I can guarantee you: it's that I'll never get a text from A-Rod." Kay asked why: "He doesn't have your number or he doesn't like you?" Flaherty came back with, "Well, probably a little bit of the other part."

Right after that, Flaherty committed one of the more wilder announcer jinxes you'll see. It literally took seconds.

Did John Flaherty admit to beef with Alex Rodriguez during Yankees' broadcast?

Oh wait, we forgot about the actual worst one ever. OK, back to story time.

Interesting. What's that all about? The two were teammates from 2004-2005 (Flaherty's career ended after '05), but we couldn't think of anything off the top of our heads that might've caused a riff between these two guys,

But Google sure is a powerful tool. One quick search revealed this article from 2022 when Flaherty had this to say about A-Rod on WFAN's Tiki and Tierney:

“The couple of years I was there when Alex and Derek were together…Alex would walk into the clubhouse and he was concerned about what all the other 25 guys were thinking about him. Every day.

“As professional baseball players, we walk in the clubhouse and we know what our job is every day and how to be prepared. Not saying I wasn’t paying attention to everybody else, but I knew what I had to do as a backup catcher. Alex was very concerned about what other people thought about him and what other people said about him. Derek didn’t care about any of that stuff.”

Now that the Timberwolves are out of the playoffs, can somebody contact A-Rod for comment? We must know how one of the biggest stars of the modern era is in an active showdown with a career backup catcher he barely knew for two years.