Time for K-Rod to show Mets, fans he's really sorry

In roughly 54 seconds Saturday afternoon, Francisco Rodriguez covered a good amount of ground, hitting all of the right notes in his first public words since his horrifying incident Wednesday night at Citi Field.

Apologies to Mets ownership, to the fans, to his teammates . . . A vow to get anger-management treatment . . . Yup, those were the key points. Whoever wrote the script performed competently enough, and the same goes for K-Rod's execution.

But in this attempted rebound tale, those 54 seconds should carry minimal value. Besides letting the third-degree assault and second-degree harassment charges play out, we need to see and hear much, much more from the Mets' closer to know whether he is the "better person" he vowed to be.

"[Rodriguez] was very apologetic as to the position that he put us in," Jerry Manuel said, before the Mets' two-game winning streak ended with a sloppy, 4-0 loss to Roy Halladay and the Phillies at home. "He felt the best way to repay us was to go out and try to do his job."

Now, here's the challenge: We know how K-Rod does his job, how he got his nickname, for that matter. He approaches his profession with a fury that - amateur psychology alert - he clearly struggles to turn off when he leaves the mound.

You know, by now, that K-Rod had set off warnings these past two seasons: His skirmishes last year with Brian Bruney (then with the Yankees) and Tony Bernazard (then a Mets official), and this year's blowup with bullpen coach Randy Niemann.

None of those incidents occurred in a vacuum; you could see how each situation escalated to ugliness. Yet Rodriguez is the one making superb money to close games for the Mets, so he has to take full accountability for his behavior.

Would Rodriguez have restrained himself Wednesday night if he had been disciplined in the previous episodes? I'm not buying that. A fine of, say, one or five thousand bucks (remember, the Players Association could've easily defeated any attempt at a suspension) doesn't really serve as much of a deterrent, especially compared to being handcuffed and detained by law-enforcement authorities.

So now we'll see. After his lightning-quick statement, K-Rod sat at his locker and chatted amicably with a handful of his teammates. No team-meeting apology was coming, Manuel said; Rodriguez planned to meet individually with players and offer his contrition for bringing his personal business into the Mets' family room.

Angel Pagan said after the game that Rodriguez had not yet apologized to him, yet had spoken to a few other players.

Rodriguez returned to action in the ninth inning, getting work in with his team down by four, and what remained of the crowd offered a hearty dosage of boos. My suspicion is, had the Mets been winning and K-Rod was trying to close out a third straight victory, the cheers would've outnumbered the boos. The cheers emerged, anyway, when K-Rod threw a scoreless ninth.

He wouldn't take questions before the game, yet he did afterward, although he appeared more irritable and nervous than normal.

""Well, that's something that I cannot control," he said of the fan treatment. "Since it's kept out of my hands, the only thing I had to do out there is go do my job."

I asked Rodriguez what is, in my mind, the critical question: Can he do his job well while dealing with his anger issues?

"I don't comment on that," he said. "I already had enough."

He might be the only one who's had enough. For his words of contrition to mean anything, yesterday marks only Day One in a long journey to rehabilitation.