In a clubhouse full of players adorned in enough silver and gold to occupy the top shelf at Cartier’s, all the riches in the Bling Apple don’t change the fact that the New York Yankees are a one-icon team, and this one has a candy bar stuck in his mouth instead of one named after him.

With a hunk of chocolate candy stuck between his puckered lips, Derek Jeter stood in the doorway leading into the clubhouse with many of his teammates heading upstream for a pre-series meeting, the standard position players meeting to refresh their memories about the pitchers on an opposing staff.

As Jeter clenched the chocolate bar between his teeth, guys pounded fists on his shoulder as if their favorite bat boy had shown up late for work, instead of the favorite to win the American League Most Valuable Player Award.

In another corner of the visitor’s clubhouse at Angel Stadium, a sea of reports parted when a writer from Sports Illustrated swooped in for a 1-on-1 interview with Alex Rodriguez, leaving other reporters looking for a kernel of anything from an infielder up from triple-A Columbus.

Like Joe DiMaggio before him, Rodriguez will be sure his message is heard only in glossy print, and he addressed the writer by calling Mr. For a moment, he resembled DiMaggio doing an interview for Life Magazine in a quiet corner of Pete Sheehy’s Yankee Stadium clubhouse.

In this one-icon town, the emulation of all Yankee franchise players has to be DiMaggio. Ruth was too individualistic, too bombastic; Gehrig was too reserved and too insecure. Mantle was too slap-happy, and by all accounts, too hung over.

In the most unforgiving media environment in baseball, Jeter glides with DiMaggio’s purported style. This is the respect and accountability that Rodriguez seems to cultivate but has never quite achieved here, perhaps because he is closer to what DiMaggio was later revealed to be: an emotionless player obsessed with perfection and requiring the constant validation of his perfection from someone calling him Mr.

In a season in which Rodriguez has been scrutinized like never before, one has to ponder the root cause of such contempt. His numbers will still be there, though not as powerful as in the past, but most superstars have at least one season where they underachieve by their grandiose standards. He’ll still hit 30 home runs and drive in more than 100 runs and his batting average will land somewhere near .300. He’s too good of a hitter not to produce. The Yankees haven’t suffered so much because of him. They entered Anaheim with a 5 ½ game lead over the freshly-swept Red Sox, whose five game debacle last week earned predictable Boston Massacre monikers.

Yet Jeter is met with cheers and Rodriguez is met with hisses, and one must wonder if DiMaggio’s respect-me-or-else act would work today, because Rodriguez’s please-respect-me-act is landing with the grace of a dead seagull.

When the New York media begins to believe that the act is an act, you’re in trouble. Rodriguez has inched closer to what DiMaggio sounds like – so controlled emotionally that his humanism is drained. Perhaps the media of DiMaggio’s time venerated him for those qualities out of necessity, or out of a fear of retribution, the loss of the lone icon, the only source that counted. As Rodriguez becomes increasingly rigid, Jeter’s personality shines even brighter.

This is an equation Rodriguez does not seem to comprehend. Rodriguez may not be the villain, but he is predictable. Again, he sits for another interview and bows his head like a choirboy in a confessional, with his elbows resting on his knees, as if one could feel him saying, ‘Forgive me for hitting .285.’

In a season in which Hideki Matsui and Gary Sheffield have been non-factors because of persistent wrist injuries, Jeter and Rodriguez remain the point of impact for all attention. Not even George Steinbrenner, Brian Cashman, Bobby Abreau, Mariano Rivera, Jason Giambi or Joe Torre evoke the same curiosity as these mismatched mashers.

Can the difference between Jeter and Rodriguez be found not in comparing their skills or statistics, but within their instincts? Jeter finds ways to win games with a skill set that does not match Rodriguez’s. Jeter has proven he can perform with the world watching.

Rodriguez hasn’t necessarily been the problem, but he also hasn’t been the solution. As the Yankees mark off days until another October, the gap between the left side of this infield grows. The shortstop Jeter increasingly becomes revered like Ruth. The third baseman Rodriguez doesn’t spiff up his image like DiMaggio. Instead, he increasingly becomes the modern Gehrig, aloof and dispatched from his own Babe.

And in the wake of failure comes the tilling of his image, while Jeter stands in the doorway with a candy bar between his lips and a grin on his face, as if he knows that to play the role of icon, all he has to be is Derek Jeter.

If Rodriguez created the image that he cared more about winning than he cared about maintaining his reputation, it’s hard to imagine that he would be dealing with the brunt of this disdain. Perhaps he wouldn’t hear hissing, have to answer daily questions about a season that hasn’t been any more dismal than any other elite player dealing with a substandard year. Instead, Rodriguez sells himself as the mechanical man with a heart of cold, dusting off all the high-priced merchandise, because nothing looks flashier than silver and gold on the top shelf.