THREE WORDS FOR YANKEES FANS - HELLO MIKE LOWELL!: Joe Heyman of SI.com reports Alex Rodriguez told the Yankees on Sunday that “he’s opting out of his record $252 million contract.“

A-Rod’s agent Scott Boras tells Heyman: “Alex made the decision today. I thought we should notify the club.“Amazing that neophyte Yankees front officers Hank Steinbrenner (who will probably soon have us aching to have George back) and Randy Levine were the only people in the 212 that didn’t realize that when they fired Torre, they were also firing A-Rod (who loved his BIG-faced manager).

Of course Hank and Levine wanted to keep A-Rod (and had been preparing an extension before Boras blew them off the past week) because the Rangers still had to pay part of his salary. A-Rod’s decision will save the Rangers a staggering $21M over three years (we’d like to be Tom Hicks’ server at Dakota’s Steakhouse tonight!).

Sunday night Rodriguez didn’t show for a ceremony at the World Series in Denver to commemorate the first annual Henry Aaron award, which signifies the AL and NL’s best hitters. While it looked like a bush league move at the time, now it appears that it was the right thing to do, since A-Rod’s appearance (and Heyman’s subsequent reportage) would’ve overshadowed the award and to an extent distracted some from the Series (Ken Rosenthal reported the news Sunday on the Fox broadcast in the eighth inning).A-Rod likely will now land with the Red Sox (those of you who think Frank McCourt has the huevos to make a financial commit like that haven’t checked his questionable real estate acumen). With A-Rod with the Sox, Mike Lowell should get a nice, fat deal from the Yanks, which is the club he came up with.