A-Rod homers in debut

Only Alex Rodriguez, major league baseball’s $275-million lightning rod, could have completed the impressive daily double in Friday’s first inning at Camden Yards.

The New York Yankees’ controversial third baseman, making his season debut after March hip surgery and an off-season confession that he once took performance-enhancing drugs, stepped to the plate to a rousing chorus of boos.

For several moments, the palpable hatred was louder, incredibly, than the venomous Bronx cheers reserved specially for Yankees first baseman, Maryland native and alleged turncoat Mark Teixeira.

With about 10 fans waving Styrofoam syringes in the section behind home plate, Rodriguez took his first big league swing since late September and connected with a 98 mph fastball from Orioles starter Jeremy Guthrie.

It landed 374 feet away -- several rows up in the left-field stands -- for a three-run homer.

Love him or hate him, Rodriguez is back.

“What a hitter. What a player,” Guthrie said. “To come off the DL like that, throw that fastball in on the black inside, and he just takes it for a home run. What a hitter. It’s a real special at-bat for him. He stepped up in the big moment right there, center stage, and does what he does best.”

Two hours before his dramatic first at-bat, Rodriguez sat in the visitors’ dugout ringed by a large contingent of New York, Baltimore and national reporters.

Rodriguez made it clear he didn’t want to talk about new allegations levied against him in the book “A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez,” in which Sports Illustrated writer Selena Roberts reports, among other things, that Rodriguez took steroids in high school and tipped pitches for opposing big league batters.

When pressed about the high school allegations, Rodriguez said, “The answer is no.”

He fielded no other questions about the book.

Otherwise, he echoed most of the same sentiments he did in March and apologized for past indiscretions.

“I have made mistakes,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve paid the price, and I look forward to the present and the future and what I can do not only to improve as a baseball player but also as a person.”

Rehabilitating from a labrum tear in his right hip, Rodriguez said being away from the team for nearly two months was difficult -- especially with the revamped Yankees struggling this season.

“It was tough to watch. I mean, I love to play,” he said. “To sit on the sidelines watching my team lose, it was hard. . . . I couldn’t wait to get back.”

And it didn’t matter that he would be taunted in his first game here. Two fans behind the Orioles dugout, for instance, held up cutout, cartoon pictures of a syringe and a naked backside.

“It should be quite a show between Tex and I,” Rodriguez joked before the game. “I just hope we wear [the Orioles’ fans] down by the ninth.”

Rodriguez struck out in the third and fifth innings, and grounded out in the seventh, triggering more cheers from the crowd.

But what will be remembered is his first at-bat, his first pitch and the first thunderous homer of 2009 for baseball’s favorite lightning rod.

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