Background

Alex Rodriguez was born on July 27, 1975 in New York City, New York, United States, to Dominican immigrants Victor and Lourdes Rodriguez. He has two half-siblings, Joe and Suzy, from his mother's first marriage.

Education

Alex's parents emigrated from the Dominican Republic to New York City, where Rodriguez was born, in the hope of finding better work prospects. They settled in Washington Heights, a Dominican stronghold. His father ran a small shoe store in Manhattan and his mother worked the night shift at an automotive plant. By the time Rodriguez was four, his parents had saved enough money to retire in their homeland. They purchased a house in Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital, and returned home. Financial losses on bad investments, however, forced them to re-emigrate to the United States when Rodriguez was nine. This time they settled in Kendall, Florida, outside Miami.

When the family moved back to the United States, Rodriguez played Khoury League Baseball, sponsored by the Boys' Club in Coconut Grove (Miami). From an early age, Rodriguez displayed exceptional baseball skills. His dream was to play in the major leagues. His idol was Cal Ripken, Jr., the Baltimore Orioles shortstop, and Rodriguez kept a poster of Ripken in his room.

Rodriguez was not yet ten when his father deserted the family. His mother provided for the family by working two jobs, as a secretary and as a waitress. Although two men became strong surrogate fathers - Eddie Rodriguez, who ran the Boys' Club in Miami, and J. D. Arteaga, Sr., the father of his best friend - it was from his mother that Rodriguez acquired a strong work ethic.

At the end of his freshman year at Christopher Columbus High School in Miami, Alex transferred to Westminster Christian School, where he became an all-around athlete. At the school, he played varsity basketball as a sophomore, was an All-State selection at quarterback, and led the baseball team to the state and national high school championships. As a senior he was touted as one of the best baseball prospects in the country, batting .505 with 9 home runs and 36 RBI in 33 games, and stealing 35 bases without being thrown out once. He was named a high school All-American and the United States Junior Baseball Player of the Year. He also was a good student and made the honor roll.

Career

Rodriguez was the first pick in the 1993 draft and was taken by the Seattle Mariners of the American League (AL). Negotiations between his agent Scott Boras and the Mariners did not go well, and Rodriguez prepared to start classes at the University of Miami. He planned to major in communications and become a sportscaster. Just hours before his first class at Miami, Rodriguez signed a three-year contract with the Mariners.

Rodriguez started his first season of the professional ball in Appleton, Wisconsin, in the Midwest League. He started well, hitting .319 in 65 games before being promoted to Double-A Jacksonville (Florida), and just 17 games later was promoted again, this time to the Seattle Mariners. At the age of eighteen, with less than a full year of professional ball, Rodriguez was in the big leagues. He finished out the season in Triple-A, where the organization thought he would get more playing time. Being sent back to the minor leagues, however, proved to be fortunate. In mid-August, the major league players went out on strike, wiping out the rest of the season. Instead of being forced to join the walkout, he was able to continue playing in Triple-A, where he gained the preparation he needed to become a player.

That winter Rodriguez played in the Dominican Republic, and he slumped badly, hitting only .179. In 1995, he shuttled between the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers and the Mariners. The third time he was demoted, and he was so discouraged that he briefly considered quitting and returning to Miami. He hit .232 for the Mariners, but a phenomenal .360 at Tacoma.

Rodriguez spent much of the off-season watching videotapes of hitters, particularly teammate Edgar Martinez, who had led the league in hitting in 1995. The following season, 1996, was Rodriguez's breakout season. He put up numbers no other shortstop in the history of the game had achieved, leading the league in hitting with a .358 average, the highest batting average ever by a rookie, and the highest average by a right-handed hitter in the American League in sixty-seven years. He was also among the league leaders with thirty-six home runs, 123 RBI, 141 runs scored, and fifty-four doubles. He was selected to the AL All-Star team, the youngest shortstop ever to play in an All-Star game. He narrowly missed being voted Most Valuable Player (MVP), finishing second to Juan Gonzalez by three votes. After slumping slightly in his sophomore year with a .300 batting average, twenty-three homers, and eighty-four RBI, Rodriguez has achieved All-Star numbers ever since. In his first seven seasons, from 1994 to 2000, he posted a .309 batting average, and he is only the third player ever to join the 40-40 club (40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in a single season).

In 2000, Rodriguez signed a ten-year contract with the American League's Texas Rangers for $252 million. It was the richest contract ever awarded to an athlete - twice the dollar amount of the previous record contract of National Basketball Association (NBA) star Kevin Garnett. It was more than Rangers owner Tom Hicks paid for his entire team plus the ballpark. The contract was negotiated by Boras, Rodriguez's hardball agent, who came armed with a glossy self-published seventy-page booklet, Alex Rodriguez: Historical Performance. With statistics from Rodriguez's first five years in the major leagues, Boras projected Rodriguez to break every offensive record in baseball and to be the greatest ballplayer of all time.

Boras got from the Rangers what he believed was fair value for a once-in-a-lifetime performer, but most baseball people were shocked. Some predicted the ruin of the game. While few disputed Rodriguez's ability, they questioned whether any player was worth that kind of money. His $25.2 million average annual salary was $1 million more than the total player payroll for the Minnesota Twins that year. And it translated into more than $155,000 per game. To help offset the cost of Rodriguez's contract, the Rangers raised prices at the ballpark by about $2 a ticket. (It was the fifth straight year with a price increase). Disenchanted fans around the league took to calling Rodriguez "Pay-Rod." Rodriguez handled the scrutiny and criticism, as well as anyone could, sometimes saying he would play for nothing if he had to, such was his devotion to the game. However, he seemed to be earning his money.

Ironically, without its best player, Seattle won the most games of any team in baseball in 2001, while the Rangers finished in last place. Rodriguez expressed no regrets about leaving Seattle.

With Texas, Rodriguez continued to expand his power while playing in all 162 games in each of his first two seasons as a Ranger. On May 12, 2001, he hit his 200th home run, becoming the fifth-youngest player to reach that mark. In 2001, Rodriguez set a new major league single-season record for home runs by a shortstop. He finished with 52 home runs and 135 RBI while batting .318. Rodriguez became a clubhouse leader, trying to inspire the lesser talents around him into better performances. He also deferred several million dollars of his salary to try to help Texas become a more competitive team.

In 2002, Rodriguez had another great, batting .300 with a league-leading 57 home runs and 142 RBI despite a slow start. He finished the season with 298 career home runs.

Alex finished the 2003 season with a .298 batting average, 47 home runs, and 118 runs batted in. After that season, he was traded to the New York Yankees. In 2005, he posted a .321 batting average, with 48 home runs and 130 runs batted in. At Yankee Stadium on August 4, 2007, at the age of 32, Rodriguez hit his 500th career home run, becoming the youngest player to accomplish that feat. The 2007 season was Rodriguez's best yet - he had a .314 batting average, with 56 home runs and 154 runs batted in - and he was named AL MVP for the third time.

In 2009, Rodriguez admitted that he used various performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) from 2001 to 2003, a revelation that threatened to taint his seemingly extraordinary career accomplishments. His preseason admission was followed by a relatively sub-par regular season that saw Rodriguez fail to hit over 30 home runs and amass over 100 RBIs for the first time since 1997. His streak of nine consecutive All-Star Game selections also ended. However, he overcame his longtime reputation of faltering in the postseason by batting .365 with six home runs and 18 RBIs during the playoffs, and the Yankees went on to win the 2009 World Series. In 2010, Rodriguez became the seventh player in major league history to hit 600 career home runs.

Rodriguez missed the first two-thirds of the 2013 campaign because of off-season hip surgery. On August 5 of that year, the day of his return to the Yankees lineup, he was suspended for the final 49 games of the season and for the entirety of the 2014 season for his involvement with Biogenesis, a Florida anti-aging clinic that supplied PEDs to a number of major league players. While Rodriguez had not tested positive for PEDs, his ties to the clinic were documented sufficiently enough for MLB to hand down its largest suspension ever for a first-time PED offender. (Rodriguez continued playing with the Yankees through the end of the season while he appealed his suspension. In January 2014, an arbitrator reduced Rodriguez's suspension to the 162 games of the 2014 major league season.)

Rodriguez rejoined the Yankees in 2015 and hit his 661st career home run that season to pass Willie Mays for the fourth-highest total in MLB history. He also recorded his 3,000th career hit later that year. A seemingly rejuvenated Rodriguez finished that season with 33 home runs, his most since 2008, but his play fell off in 2016, as he batted just .200 as a part-time player before abruptly retiring in August of that year. He finished his career with 3,115 hits, 696 home runs, and 2,086 RBIs, which ranked 20th, 4th, and 3rd, respectively, among all-time MLB totals at the time of his retirement. Rodriguez then entered into a second career as a baseball analyst and broadcaster.

Alex is an MLB studio analyst for FOX Sports. In 2018, he joined ESPN as a Sunday Night Baseball analyst. In the same year, Rodriguez became the host of the show Back in the Game. It was also announced that Rodriguez would be part of the judging panel for the Forbes' Next 1000 list. He was featured in a Pepsi Cola commercial, a commercial for Guitar Hero World Tour, a Planters Super Bowl commercial, and a Presidente beer Super Bowl commercial.

Rodriguez is a founder of A-Rod Corp, Newport Property Construction, and Monument Capital Management. In 2012, Alex and Mark Mastrov created the Energy Fitness gym chain in Mexico City.

In 2020, Rodriguez became the chairman of a Dominican beer company Presidente.

Achievements

• At a very young age, Alex Rodriguez was being compared to the greatest shortstops in baseball history. Few if any shortstops had ever combined consistent and slick fielding with powerful offensive production the way Rodriguez did in his early years. At the age of 26, he established a new all-time record for home runs by a shortstop in a single season and, the following year, he broke his own record.
  
  Rodriguez has won numerous awards and is known for his versatile talent on the field and his good conduct off it. He was a 14-time All-Star, winning three American League Most Valuable Player Awards, 10 Silver Slugger Awards, and two Gold Glove Awards. Alex is also a 3-time Babe Ruth Home Run Award winner.
  
  Rodriguez has been named 'Seattle Mariners Minor League Player of the Year,' 'Midwest League All-Star,' 'The Sporting News Player of the Year,' 'Hitter of the Year,' 'Pepsi Clutch Performer of the Year,' and 'This Year in Baseball Awards Player of the Year.'

Works

More photos

• TV series

  • Entourage: Season 8

    (In the final season of the hit HBO comedy series, Vince, ...)

    2011
  • Back in the Game

    (Reality series pairing former professional athletes that ...)

    2018

Politics

In 2016, Alex donated to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. In 2020, he endorsed Joe Biden.

Views

In 2003, Alex Rodriguez gave $3.9 million to the University of Miami. He also donated $500,000 to the University of Miami School of Business Administration. Rodriguez is a Miami-Dade Boys & Girls Clubs Board Member, to which he and A-Rod Corp donated $1 million.

Alex created a scholarship program for Boys and Girls Club alumni to attend the University of Miami. Along with Jennifer Lopez, he donated a year's worth of meals from Tiller & Hatch to Tennessee elementary students and 20,000 prepared meals to help hospitality workers who had lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Quotations: "Always follow your dreams, don't let anyone tell you that you can't be something."

"Anyone can forget about talent, but if you're a good person, your name will be remembered a long time."

"Be respectful. Treat people the way you want to be treated. Respect the lowest rank and the highest rank and you'll never get in trouble."

"Enjoy your sweat because hard work doesn't guarantee success, but without it, you don't have a chance."

"I'd rather have a Gold Glove (Award) than a Silver Slugger (Award). Defense is so much more of a team game and one of my goals this year was to make fewer than twenty-five errors."

"I love the challenge of the game. I love the work. My goal right now is to have a season next year that will make people forget about this one. I'll use things like this for motivation. I'm pumped. I'm hungry."

"I'm a terrible singer. I feel lucky to play baseball. You can't be gifted in everything."

"I'm having a hard time finding a date. I don't trust any women I meet. I'm very skeptical."

"I'm not impulsive at all - except about buying clothes. That's my biggest weakness."

"I need to make more contact. I struck out more than one-hundred times. I can cut down on my errors and I'd like to steal thirty or forty bags. I made a lot of dumb baserunning mistakes this year."

"I want to be known as a good major-leaguer, and good major-leaguers work to become good."

"I want to step forward. I don't want to step on anyone's toes doing it. If I do, too bad."

"Keep reading books, stay in school. I encourage kids to read as much as they can, I challenge you to read a book every two weeks, like I try to."

"Last year I would have paid anything to watch a Major League game. This year I'm playing in one."

"Leadership is a role you have to earn in order to be effective."

"Looks aren't the number one thing. They have to have class, intelligence, then looks. If I was the ugliest SOB in the world it would be a lot easier."

"Some things are meant to be and if it was, you will know it."

"The only stage I need is the World Series."

"There is a difference between image and reputation. Image is nice, reputation is developed over an entire career. Reputation is what I'm searching for."

"This whole year has been a learning experience. There are still a lot of areas in which I think I can improve."

"We have a responsibility not just as athletes, but as members of society to treat people well. To do things the right way."

"What I've learned from Cal is to respect the game, respect the fans. Nothing fancy out there. Just do your job."

"You can take my cars or my house, just don't mess with my clothes."

Membership

Alex Rodriguez is a member of the Paley Center for Media's board of trustees.

Personality

Rodriguez is polite and humble. He shows respect for his teammates and fans and handles his success graciously.

Rodriguez likes to work with children. In Miami he developed Grand Slam for Kids, a program that encourages elementary school students to focus on reading, math, physical fitness, and good citizenship; as part of the program, he visits schools and holds assemblies. Some sportswriters have described him as the anti-Rodman, a star athlete who cherishes the values of the past, notably a love for the game, hard work, and gratitude.

Physical Characteristics: Rodriguez has a multiracial appearance - kinky dark hair, bright gray-green eyes, and light bronze skin - and a Spanish surname. He says that most people do not perceive him as Dominican or Latino.

Quotes from others about the person

• Tom Hicks: "Alex is one person, and as it's been shown in New York, one person can't win a championship. He couldn't do it here. He can't do it there. You have to have a team, and you've got to have pitching."
  
  Alan Trammell: "Alex is going to be among the elite. If he comes even close to the season he had last year, he'll be in his own league. You try to compare him to somebody, but you can't. He is the only one who has done what he has done."
  
  Ken Griffey, Jr.: "Alex is playful, enthusiastic, and cheerful. He's fun to have around."
  
  Gary DiSarcina: "He is what baseball needs right now. He respects the game, has a lot of class and image most people would pay for. I wish my daughter could marry him, but she's only two years old."
  
  Edgar Martinez: "He learned in one or two years what it took me ten years to learn. He uses the whole field, foul line to foul line."
  
  Derek Jeter: "I'm Alex's biggest fan. I brag on him so much that my teammates are sick and tired of me talking about him. Last year we talked all the time, especially early in the season. We both knew if we didn't get off to a good start, we might be shipped out."
  
  Lou Piniella: "The great thing is that he's always looking to improve. How good can he be? Well, we're talking about a guy who is Hall of Fame caliber."

Interests

• collecting art, shopping, boating, reading, and computer games

• Writers

  Peter Richmond, Rick Riordan

• Artists

  Richard Prince, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Eddie Murphy, Demi Moore, Michael Douglas

• Sport & Clubs

  baseball, golf and basketball

• Athletes

  Dale Murphy, Cal Ripken Jr., Barry Bonds

• Music & Bands

  R&B, Mariah Carey, The Rolling Stones, Jay Z, Journey and Kings of Leon

Connections

Alex Rodriguez married Cynthia Scurtis in 2002. They have two children - Natasha and Ella. The couple divorced in 2008. Rodriguez has reportedly dated various celebrities including Kate Hudson and Cameron Diaz.

Rodriquez and Jennifer Lopez struck up a relationship in early 2017. They announced their engagement in March 2019.

Father:

Victor Rodriguez

(1929 - 2015)

Mother:

Lourdes Rodriguez

ex-spouse:

Cynthia Scurtis

(born December 28, 1972)

Daughter:

Natasha Alexander Rodriguez

(born November 18, 2004)

Daughter:

Ella Alexander Rodriguez

(born April 21, 2008)

Half-brother:

Joseph Dunand

half-sister:

Arlene Susy Dunand

ex-partner:

Cameron Diaz

ex-partner:

Kate Hudson

(born April 19, 1979)

Kate Hudson is an American actress, author, and fashion entrepreneur.

Partner:

Jennifer Lopez

Friend:

Doug Glanville

(born August 25, 1970)

Doug Glanville is an American former professional baseball outfielder who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs, and Texas Rangers.

Friend:

Derek Jeter

(born June 26, 1974)

Derek Jeter is an American former professional baseball shortstop, businessman, and baseball executive. He has been the chief executive officer (CEO) and part owner of the Miami Marlins of Major League Baseball (MLB) since September 2017.

Friend:

Kobe Bryant

References

• Alex Rodriguez's Twitter
• Alex Rodriguez's Facebook
• Alex Rodriguez's Instagram