Could A-Rod be back this month?

Excluding his hip injury, New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez had a horrible off-season. And the superlative "horrible" was probably an understatement.

There was the Yankee Years book by Joe Torre that referred to him as A-Fraud, the leaked report about his steroid usage and then the link to the Manhattan Madame.

After the steroid scandal, which was close to spring training, A-Rod talked about how he was looking forward to the escape and diversion of just playing baseball.

Instead, he injured his hip and underwent surgery on it on March 9th. The initial prognosis was that he would miss six to nine weeks.

A-Rod "feels 70 percent" and there is a chance that he could be back on the field by the end of this month.

"Everything is going well," Cashman said. "He's working extremely hard. Everything is going as planned."

Rodriguez is a career .306 hitter with 553 homeruns, 1606 runs batted in and stole 283 bases.