Remember the days when 40 home runs and 120 RBIs were enough? Remember when no one cared when you hit home runs, just as long as you hit them? Remember when Alex Rodriguez played for the Mariners and Rangers and was considered the best baseball player of our era?

Those days are long gone for A-Rod, because in New York, it's not enough to be a great player — you have to be great when the fans decide you ought to be. In the Big Apple, that means two things — do it against the Red Sox and do it in the playoffs, and if you don't … the hell with you.

A-Rod has found this out the hard way in his first three years in pinstripes, and as the playoffs get closer, the two-time MVP could find himself booed out of town.

So why have Yankee fans never embraced such a great player playing on the biggest stage? The answer is a complex one, and it all began the day Alex Rodriguez became a Yankee.

A-Rod joined the Yanks prior to the 2004 season — one year after Aaron Boone's Game 7 walk-off home run prolonged the "Curse of the Bambino." But that season did not have the fairy-tale ending most baseball fans would have expected. The "little Marlins that could" deep-fried the Yankees in six games, prolonging the Yankees championship drought to a whole three seasons — that's about 30 years in Yankee years.

In 2004, the A-Rod era began. With the best player in the game joining All-Stars like Derek Jeter, Gary Sheffield, Hideki Matsui and Mariano Rivera, the elusive 27th championship appeared to be all but won. But the Yankees did not win the World Series that year, nor did A-Rod live up to expectations.

Everyone knows the old adage that your first season in pinstripes is typically not an easy one. It happened to Roger Clemens, Jason Giambi and Randy Johnson (apparently he needs two seasons and counting to adjust, but that's beside the point). No one in New York thought A-Rod would go through a similar adjustment period — but that's exactly what happened.

In 1998, Rodriguez had the worst statistical year of his career since he became the A-Rod we all know and love. His 36 home runs and 106 RBIs were his lowest totals in seven seasons.

But in New York, a good postseason can change all of that — unless, that is, you happen to be part of the biggest choke job in sports history. A-Rod's 2004 postseason numbers are not bad at all. In the divisional series against Minnesota, A-Rod batted .421 with a home run and three RBIs.

Then in the championship series, he batted .258 with two round-trippers and five RBIs. But all that is an afterthought in the minds of Yankee fans, because all they remember is A-Rod's infamous slap on Bronson Arroyo while trying to beat out a groundball in Game 6. Unfortunately for A-Rod, he became the face of the biggest choke in sports history — and that will never in a million years be forgotten by Yankee fans.

In 2005, it seemed A-Rod was back on track and on his way to rewriting the record books. Rodriguez took the struggling Yankees under his wing and carried them to the postseason, en route to his second MVP award — and it finally seemed as though he was officially a Yankee. But in New York, just like you can erase a bad year with a good postseason, you can also erase a phenomenal regular season with a horrific postseason. A-Rod's .133 average and zero-RBI performance in last year's ALDS has landed him in the Yankee fan's dog house — and he has yet to get out.

This season, A-Rod's struggles have been well-documented by sports talk shows, tabloids and almost every media outlet known to man. ESPN's Baseball Tonight went as far as deciding that the Yankees were planning to trade A-Rod, even though no such rumors had ever surfaced.

A-Rod has heard the boo-birds all season long in the house that Ruth built, and he will continue to do so until he lives up to the sky-scraping expectations of Yankee fans.

A-Rod is the highest-paid player in all of sports, and this season he is slated to make a cool $25 million again, roughly $150,000 per game, and for that much money, it is not enough to be great, you have to be the best.

While Rodriguez's numbers this year are nothing to sneeze at, they are far from the best. Rodriguez has the 19th most home runs in the major leagues and his 106 RBIs rank 14th. Players like Albert Pujols, Ryan Howard, Travis Hafner and David Ortiz are having far superior offensive seasons compared to A-Rod's — and that is not OK in the eyes of Yankee fans.

Not only does A-Rod have to combat the wrath of angry Yankee fans, but day in and day out, he must listen to comparisons between himself and the prince of New York, Derek Jeter. A-Rod, a former Gold Glove winner at shortstop, switched positions to accommodate Jeter, and he has yet to emerge from underneath the captain's shadow.

Jeter has won four championships with the Yankees, and he defines what it means to be an athlete in New York. D.J. is media-savvy, fan-friendly and has a knack for coming through in the clutch — all things A-Rod is not. Yankee fans have made it nearly impossible for Rodriguez to succeed by constantly comparing him to one of the greatest athletes in New York sports history.

Finally, A-Rod has never been accepted in New York because to Yankee fans, he is just another high-priced player on a team full of All-Stars. In Texas and Seattle (post-Griffey Jr.), A-Rod was the only player those teams had. But in Yankee Stadium, fans look out at Monument Park and see names like Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Berra. They look on field and see past World Series champions and future Hall-of-Famers like Jeter, Rivera, and manager Joe Torre. To Yankee fans, A-Rod is just another great player who has yet to help the Yankees win a championship.

However, the $25 million man is starting to earn his paycheck as of late, batting .423 with five home runs and 10 RBIs in his last seven games. But unfortunately for A-Rod, he's only one 0-4 day away from hearing the boos at Yankee Stadium.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I am a Yankee fan myself. A spoiled baseball fan who has had the privilege of watching my team win four World Series while growing up in the city of New York.

But I have never booed A-Rod, and I never will. I believe he's held to too high of a standard and as long as fans keep booing him, more strikeouts and throwing errors are going to be seen.

So what will it take for A-Rod to win over the hearts of Yankee fans? A championship would help — but he has to hit a walk-off home run in Game 7 of the World Series … against the Red Sox, of course.

Andrew is a junior from New York City. Share your thoughts about A-Rod at [email protected].