A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez (15 page)

teau he had purchased were under way. He told Alex its pristine, 20-acre grounds would soon be outfi tted with a helicopter pad.

“Alex was really interested in real estate,” Hicks says. “He was very interested in the price of housing.” It was clear that Rodriguez was happy to envision himself living among the elite of politics, business and sports, and carefully gleaning from his neighbors the strategies of success. “Alex is a sponge,” Hicks says. “He just soaks up information. He used to ask me all about leveraged buyouts.”

When it came to investments, Alex wasn’t like other athletes. He wasn’t looking to open a restaurant or fund a friend’s business. He wanted to be a mogul.

Hicks was Alex’s kind of owner: savvy, worldly, self-made, number 382 on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. Another key selling point: Hicks made Alex feel secure. He vowed that he wouldn’t abandon Alex, at least not through the life of their 10-year deal . . . or 12 years, if Boras got his way. Hicks perceived that the perks Alex demanded were less about entitlement than about confi rmation of his status. Although most players probably thought Rodriguez had enough self-confi dence to fi ll an ocean, he desperately needed a constant stream of validation. “He is a very insecure person,” says Joe Arriola.

With the Mets no longer in the running, Boras now had to get creative in order to generate a bidding war for his client. He wouldn’t allow Alex to sign with the Rangers without making them sweat and up the ante. Many teams, he insisted to anyone who would listen, were willing to pony up the 10-year, $200 million entry fee
to put Alex into their uniform. He wouldn’t specify which teams were ready to make that deal, of course. “When you dance with a lady, it’s better to whisper in her ear than use a megaphone,” Boras said.

He did have one ardent suitor, the Mariners. They wanted Alex to return to Seattle but had nowhere near the resources to make it happen. They offered a reported $130 million over fi ve years; Alex called the deal insulting.

One by one, the competitors dropped out: the Mariners, White Sox and Braves. Yet Boras had the Rangers convinced they were bidding against another team, so Hicks kept sweetening his offer.

On December 15, Alex was at the Mirage in Las Vegas, enjoying the cabaret act of the singer/impersonator Danny Gans. Alex loved Vegas in all its decadence, with its fake facades and phony fl air. In later years, it would become his preferred getaway destination, a place where he didn’t have to camoufl age his sinner’s side.

For now it was an escape from the pressure of the biggest deal of his life. About halfway through Gans’s act, Boras called. Alex had put his cell phone on his lap and set it to “vibrate” because he knew an offer was imminent.

“Alex, Texas can get this thing done. What do you want to do?”

“Get it done,” Alex said.

Boras, Hicks and General Manager Doug Melvin negotiated for more than eight hours in a Dallas hotel room. Hicks felt the adrenaline of the escalating numbers. Melvin put his head in his hands, fretting over the fi gures. “I think Doug knew things were getting out of control but couldn’t stop it,” says a person familiar with the negotiations. Some time after midnight, Boras stood beside an easel near the sofa, where he had written “252/10.” It was over. “Anything else?” asked an exhausted and elated Hicks. “Any more to say?” He stood in his cowboy boots branded with a Rangers logo, reached out his hand to Boras and pulled him close for an
embrace. “I think that’s one of the fi rst times Scott realized going to an owner can have a real benefi t in negotiations,” Phillips says.

The 10-year, $252 million deal would dramatically alter the business landscape of baseball— it raised the ceiling for superstar salaries, gave the players’ union more clout and compelled owners to adopt a luxury tax that would help small-market teams compete in the otherwise lopsided free-agent market.

Two days after Alex Rodriguez signed with Texas, he held a press conference in Dallas (the delay gave the national press plenty of time to book fl ights). Alex entered the Diamond Club of The Ballpark in Arlington wearing a tailored black suit and gold tie, a wardrobe choice that purposefully refl ected what he perceived to be the core of Texas: oil and money.

As he looked at the more than 300 reporters gathered at his feet, his fi rst word was “Wow.” He then spoke with his usual elo-quence about how thrilled he was to be a Texas Ranger and fl ashed his beatifi c smile. He talked of building a champion in Dallas.

Alex then slipped a bit, let some bitterness break through the shield of studied humility that usually earned him latitude in his press dealings. “When I came here to visit, a lot of people were joking and asking, ‘What’s A-Rod doing?’ ” Rodriguez said as he looked at his new owner. “Nobody’s laughing right now; are they, Mr. Hicks?”

He chastised the Mariners for making him a lowball offer that had left him in “disbelief” and threw a jab at the Mets and their GM: “I wish I could play against Steve Phillips’ team and lead twenty-four guys to beat them up. I don’t know Steve on a personal level. Obviously he has an agenda against me, but I’m not sure what it is. The Mets were a defi nite option until he started saying we were making all these demands that obviously were huge speculation. You eliminate them, and you move on with the process.” No one in the room that day stopped to point out that the Mets, in fact, had eliminated
him
.
The historic deal was discussed on network newscasts and became fodder for the late-night monologues.
ESPN the Magazine
asked its readers to vote on Alex’s new nickname: E-Rod, K-Rod, MVP-Rod or Pay-Rod. On message boards, Alex was depicted as Gordon Gekko with “greed is good” in e-mail subject lines. Some baseball columnists decried his contract, saying it would be the ruin of baseball. The deal came to defi ne him for many people: 252/10 wasn’t just another stat; it was the only stat. Instead of big hits and defensive gems, 252/10 became his bar code, the price tag stamped on his chest. During spring training Alex began to feel the burden of the scrutiny, saying, “There’s this 252 tag over my head.”

It was a splendid April 1 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, sunny and warm. Major League Baseball had come to the island for Opening Day of the 2001 season, hoping to build on its Latino fan base.

One day earlier, Tom Hicks had stood in his soaked swimsuit at a resort hotel and declared the Rangers a lock to win the AL West.

ESPN was on-site to broadcast the debut of A-Rod with his new team.

The atmosphere was electric. Crowds formed on the roads leading to the hotel the teams were lodged in, hoping to get a glimpse of the players. As the buses for the Rangers and the Toronto Blue Jays were escorted by police through the city, pedestrians clapped and cheered. “You felt like the president was coming,” recalls Alex Gonzalez, who had played youth ball with Rodriguez in Miami and started at shortstop for Toronto that day. “It was overwhelming.”

A-Rod was visibly nervous as he took grounders before the game. He misplaced his batting glove, talked a little too fast, and chewed his gum a million times a minute. “I think he was defi nitely feeling the pressure to come out and make a statement on Opening Day,” says Gonzalez. “He was under the magnifying glass.”
Before the game, writers referred to him as “Mr. Two-Fifty-Two.” After the game, they called him something worse: a fl op. He botched a throw for one error, slipped on the artifi cial turf to foil a double play and then tripped on his shoelaces on an infi eld hit. The game story in the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
summed up his fi asco this way: “Oh, yeah, one more thing: The $252 million man wasn’t even the best shortstop on the fi eld Sunday. That distinction, at least for the day, belonged to the Blue Jays’ Alex Gonzalez.”

Afterward, there were parties for both teams back at the resort hotel. But Alex was a no-show. He was in shock. He had until now played in the shadow of Ken Griffey, Jr., and he suddenly missed that cover. He was more comfortable being an eager disciple rather than the man expected to lead. “I think people may have looked to him more as a leader and it didn’t turn out that way,” says the Rangers’ former closer, Tim Crabtree. “Alex Rodriguez is not a leader. I perceive him as another guy who kind of is in his own world. There’s no question about his work ethic, but as far as looking for a guy to lead a ball club, that’s not him. He had too many things going on, too many priorities in his life. He wasn’t really looked upon as a leader, although I think Mr. Hicks would’ve really liked for him to be.”

That “252” became an inescapable disclaimer to everything Alex did, as if it were the surgeon general’s note on each pack of cigarettes:
Warning: This player makes an ungodly $252 million!

“How much is A-Rod making per strikeout? Per hit? Per trip over shoelaces? Per sunfl ower seeds spit or not spit?” asked
Los Angeles Times
columnist Diane Pucin after Alex struck out three times during the Rangers’ home opener two days later.

Alex had his motivational guru, Jim Fannin, on speed dial.

“Pressure is good. Pressure is fun,” Alex kept telling himself, but the heightened expectations made him pace around the clubhouse, tighten his bat grip and rush throws. In his fi rst 10 games, he had just 11 hits, 2 RBIs and no home runs. “He felt it,” says Rangers
teammate Bill Haselman. “He had the mentality of somebody trying to hit a three-run homer with nobody on base.”

Alex had always worked hard, but he worked even harder now.

He would often be in the batting cage for an hour after games. He studied all the scouting reports and exhibited a voracious appetite for in-game nuances. He stole signs at shortstop to detect when a hit-and- run was on. He practiced throws from every conceiv-able position, right down to a bare-handed dive for a ball where he would twist and throw from his knees. “I’m kind of like, ‘Wow, dude, why would you even practice that?’ ” recalls former Rangers teammate Mike Lamb. “And then, that night, the exact play happens, and you’re just like, ‘What in the world?’ That kind of thing just boggled my mind. You watch these guys do stuff like that, and it ruins it for us mere mortals.”

Alex was in constant motion in the Rangers clubhouse from the moment he arrived—at noon for a 7 p.m. game—until well after the last out. He’d sometimes watch game videos till 3 a.m.

One ex-Ranger says Alex was “the only player I ever knew who would turn up the volume on a game tape to hear what the com-mentators were saying about him. If they said he was great, he’d hit the rewind button to listen to it again.”

Alex’s self-obsession had on-the-fi eld benefi ts.

“He was aware of everything,” says Haselman. “He was aware of guys trying to steal signs, of guys taking too big a lead. He was aware how important it is to hold a guy on second with one out, not letting him steal third. The little things that don’t show up in stats, kind of running the fi eld. In that regard he was tremendous, just on top of everything. He knew the pitches coming, the pitches being thrown to the hitters.”

Alex’s in-game attention to detail cut both ways, though, during his three seasons in Texas. Former Rangers say he would also use his insider’s information
against
his team in what they describe as a stunning display of devious behavior. In games that were
lopsided—and with the Rangers, there were plenty—Alex would occasionally violate a sacred clubhouse code: From his shortstop vantage point, he would tip pitches to the supposed opposition at the plate in a quid pro quo. It would always be a middle infi elder who could reciprocate.

“It was a friend of his . . . a buddy who maybe had gone 0 for 3 and needed a hit,” says one former player. “Alex would see the catcher’s signs. He’d signal the pitch to the hitter, do a favor for him. And down the line, Alex would expect the same in return.”

According to ex-Rangers, here’s how the pitch tipping worked:

The game is out of hand—one team has an eight-run lead in the late innings. Alex picks up the pitch and location signs being fl ashed by catcher Pudge Rodriguez. This is a normal routine for shortstops, the quarterbacks of the infi eld, who often use the knowledge to align the defense. If a scouting report indicates a hitter will pull a curveball, a signal by a shortstop to his defense can help infi elders adjust.

The key questions are:
When
is the signal given? And,
How
is it delivered?

A shortstop’s cue to the defense is usually subtle and sophisticated—a hand slipped over a kneecap, a jab step forward— and it coincides with the pitcher’s windup. This way, the hitter cannot pick it up. His eyes are on the pitcher’s release.

Some Rangers say Alex’s cues appeared to be more conspicuous when conspiring with the opposing batter.

Before the Texas pitcher’s windup, Alex, with his left arm hanging by his side, would twist his glove back and forth as if turning a dial on a safe’s lock. Then the hitter knew: a changeup was on the way. Alex would also sweep dirt with his cleat to tip a slider to the batter.

The location of a pitch is vital to a hitter, too. Alex would stretch his back and lean left or right, depending on where the
catcher laid down his sign, to let the batter know if the pitch was going inside or outside.

“It wasn’t like he did it to throw a game—that wasn’t it at all—but he did it to help himself,” says a former Ranger. “He probably thought: ‘Hey, it’s a few times, no harm.’ He didn’t care if it killed his own guys. It was about stats for Alex—his.”

Alex expected the same courtesy. If he were having an off night near the end of a meaningless game, Alex could look to a buddy in the middle infi eld for a sign. “Here was the game’s best player— and yet he felt he needed this,” says a former player.

Neither the Rangers nor an opposing team were ever in on these tipping conspiracies. In fact, it was only detectible because of repetition over many games and because Alex’s mannerisms were so animated. Few Rangers were aware it was going on, but those who did were maddened by it.

Team chemistry is built on trust. Camaraderie is based on the premise that everyone in the clubhouse is in it together. Cheating and baseball are historically entwined—from corked bats to spit balls to pine tar—but the object of gaining an edge is never to sabotage your own team.