Zito factored tabloids into choice of team

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NEW YORK -- All week, the tabloids here have gone cuckoo over the impending divorce of Alex Rodriguez and his wife, Cynthia, as well as their alleged love quadrangle with rockers Madonna and Lenny Kravitz. Wednesday's New York Post, for instance, wrote about a stripper who supposedly had an affair with A-Rod. The story quoted friends of the woman describing Rodriguez as "beautiful," "very attractive" and "well-endowed."Giants lefty Barry Zito, who pitches in Thursday's series finale at Shea Stadium, acknowledged that stuff such as that played into his decision to sign with San Francisco rather than the Mets, who also pursued him."I knew that would be a factor, the media markets," Zito said. "You get exposed and you don't really have a personal life anymore. It becomes so much more inflated than the reality is, which is, we're just playing ball. I think buying into the lie that we're doing something so important, I think it hurts our performance because we feel our performance is determining the fate of the world. A lot of times in huge media markets you can start to think that."Zito has seen the A-Rod stuff in the papers and said, "It's just a shame. I don't know what the real story is. Only a limited amount of people do. It's just a shame that society is geared this way where we put someone's details of their lives or problems on the front page. It's a shame that people are entertained more with the downfalls and struggles of certain peoples in the spotlight than they are with their successes."Zito can only imagine how he would have been treated in New York if he signed with the Mets for $126 million and started a season 4-12. Last year, Zito was 11-13, with two of his wins against the Mets. In fact, he pitched seven shutout innings in a victory at Shea and acknowledged he throws with a little extra motivation against the Mets because he believes team officials bad-mouthed his abilities two winters ago in a bid to lower his signing price. He noted he won his first 11 decisions against the Rangers, who drafted him in 1998 but, in Zito's mind, tried to lowball him into signing."It's always fun to go out and pitch well against the team that said certain things about you," he said. "Now that I'm kind of pitching the way I should be, it will be fun."(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)