A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez (8 page)

Susy could see enough of Alex on the fi eld that day to know he went three for four with a home run. Seventy-two scouts showed up for his second game. “Newspaper headlines called me Super-man,” Alex once recalled of his high school days. “It was a crazy time. Everyone wanted a piece of me.”

Who was looking out for him? His mother cared deeply about Alex’s welfare, but she was working two jobs. His siblings— Susy and Joe— were there, but they were also trying to establish themselves after college.

Alex relied on a circle of adults, from Eddie Rodriguez (no relation) at the Miami Boys & Girls Club on Southwest 32nd Avenue to an array of youth coaches, from mentors such as Jose Canseco to agents trying to woo him. His natural impressionability as a teen was heightened by the fact that he had no father standing sentry between him and the many adults who saw a payday in Alex. He was about to make millions. That was clear.

Alex played to the media craving for a player who was fresh and grounded despite the crush of attention. As Ed Giuliotti wrote in the Fort Lauderdale
Sun-Sentinel
, “Alex Rodriguez, the object of their desire, smiled, called scouts by their fi rst names and teased
many.” He carried himself with modesty and an air of innocence, often telling reporters how lucky he was to have played in the United States instead of the D.R., where the poverty means no leather gloves or green fi elds.

The media were enamored of his charisma and awestruck by his numbers. He hit .505 with nine home runs, 14 doubles, 6 triples and 35 stolen bases in 35 attempts over 33 games during his senior year at Westminster. The stats ensured that he was all but a lock to go number one in the June draft. Detroit Tigers scout Steve Sou-choki said, “He’s got instincts you can’t teach. I wish we had a lot of players in our area like him. It would make our job easier, that’s for sure.” A top college baseball coach, Cal State Fullerton’s Augie Garrido, said at the time, “If you were to sit down in front of a computer and say, ‘How would I construct the perfect shortstop?,’

you’d put all the data in and then you would see Alex Rodriguez.”

Covering all his bases, Alex had signed a letter of intent to play for the Miami Hurricanes before his senior season, but nobody expected him to walk away from the big money that would come to the number one pick. Every agent worth his Rolex wanted a chance to land Alex. They came with presents and slick talk. “Alex knew not to break the NCAA rules,” Susy says.

They arrived with pitches and promises. “We interviewed the top four agents,” Susy says.

The list was then cut to two: Ron Shapiro and Scott Boras.

They could not have been more different. Boras was a rumpled, hard-core negotiator, relentless in squeezing the last penny out of owners even if it meant fabricating rival offers from phantom teams. He would later be depicted by the media as the man who had ruined baseball by driving salaries beyond the reach of small-market teams.

Almost always dressed in a tie, Shapiro was a Harvard law school graduate with a reputation for nurturing his clients. He cared about their happiness and always factored in emotional well-being when signing his stars to lucrative deals. He was the agent for Cal Ripken, Jr., and he seemed to be the favorite of the Rodriguez family.

Shapiro realized that Alex was malleable, vulnerable. “To me it looked like a particularly appealing situation because not only would Alex benefi t from some representation but maybe having someone guide him and help shape some of the values that he would have,” Shapiro says. “One of the things I feared for Alex early on— and I told this to my partner Michael Maas and later shared it with Cal Ripken— was that while he had this tremendous talent, he might be persuaded to take steps that might not build on the happiness quotient for him, on the satisfaction quotient.”

One adviser Alex leaned on when making the decision between Boras and Shapiro was a family friend who was a fi xture in the Miami community as a businessman and public offi cial. Joe Arriola had been a youth-league coach of Alex and was the uncle of major leaguer Alex Fernandez, a client of Boras. “Alex’s fi rst choice was Shapiro,” Arriola recalls. “And I told him, ‘Look, I know Scott pretty well, and maybe you should talk.’ And that’s how Scott got the client.”

Boras didn’t come to Alex bearing gifts. One agent had taken Alex to Hooters, where he tried to entice the young star with an equipment bag full of goodies: balls, bats and gloves. It was insulting to Alex. Boras promised a more cunning inducement: a job at his agency for Susy. “Boras got to her,” says Hofman. “That’s really the key.”

Seattle Mariners scout Roger Jongewaard had devoured all the video of Alex and had no doubt he was seeing something special. He’d sold his impressions to the highest levels of the organization. “We knew what Roger believed, and he was very convincing,” recalls Woody Woodward, the general manager of the Mariners in the
1990s. “We knew Alex had potential to be unlike anything we’d seen before.” Jongewaard’s scouting report from May 10, 1993, makes that clear. Under physical maturity, he wrote: “Similar to Jeter only bigger and better.” Under player strengths: “Better at 17 now than all the superstars in baseball were when they were seniors in H.S.” Under player weaknesses: “Tends to jump at the ball.” Under additional comments: “Generates a special feeling when watching him play. Premium prospect with potential to be an impact player. . . . [Darren] Dreifort would be good pick but Rodriguez is better!”

Rodriguez had already stated his interest in joining the Mariners as the number one pick, but Boras was at work well behind the scenes, advising the family from afar. He couldn’t be directly involved because that would jeopardize Alex’s amateur status— and eliminate the threat that he might play for Miami rather than go pro. After being coached by Boras, Alex called Jongewaard at his Seattle offi ce on the morning before the draft. With his assistant in the offi ce and the phone on speaker, Jongewaard heard Alex speaking in a way he never recalled before. His voice sounded odd, weirdly rushed. “It was like he was reading from a piece of paper,”

Jongewaard recalls.

“Roger,” Alex told Jongewaard. “Please don’t draft me. I want to go to a National League team, and Seattle is too far away, and I don’t want you guys to draft me.”

“Alex,” Jongewaard said, “it’s too late. We already have your number and we plan on drafting you.”

“Uh,” Alex said, having to put his script down and improvise.

“Bye.”

Jongewaard wasn’t stunned by the bizarre conversation. Alex wasn’t the endearing kid from Kendall in that moment but something manufactured. “I fi gured it was probably a Boras thing, where they would try to get him to a bigger-market team,” Jongewaard says. “So I was somewhat expecting that.”
He was right. Boras had begun his famous game of cat and mouse with teams vying for his clients. He was an expert at creating divisiveness from unity, at gaining emotional separation from club and player so he could work the cold numbers of a contract.

Boras capitalized on Alex’s need for someone— particularly a male fi gure close to him— to defi ne his identity for him. Boras liked to grind teams up for every dollar, so Alex was sure to be a holdout.

The Mariners knew what they were up against but made the call, anyway. A few minutes into the 1993 draft, around 1 p.m., the phone at the Arteaga home rang. This was where Alex wanted to be on draft day: where his memories of Mr. Arteaga were fresh, where his best friend J.D. lived, where his family could surround him . . . and with local TV cameras on hand to record it all. There were more than a hundred people packed into the family room and kitchen. It was a festive atmosphere with cupcakes on the table and a family cruise to the Bahamas planned for later that week. Alex had gone on a shopping binge with his mother. “We bought $1,000

worth of suits,” Alex told the Fort Lauderdale
Sun-Sentinel
.

Where had Alex gotten that kind of money? Or had he just fudged the number? Anything was possible with Alex. On draft day, he wore a denim button-down shirt with a cartoon-colored tie decorated with baseball card images that read strike and home run. All week, Alex had been fl ooded with inquiries about whether he would feel pressure to do too much as the probable number one pick. “I know I’ll be able to handle it, because I keep attacking people,” he said. “I think I’m the best. If they think I’m the best, I’ll go and take it to them early. Then they’re mentally whipped.”

The phone in the Arteaga house rang again. The crowd let it ring twice. It was Jongewaard on the line, delivering the news that Alex Rodriguez was the number one pick. Inside, he’d wanted this despite his ramblings about the National League and the distance to Seattle. Numbers would always form Alex’s identity. In effect, he
liked being a number— as long as it was number one. Top salary, best stats, highest draft pick.

There was an explosion of cheers and then relief as everyone drifted toward the cupcakes after the call from Seattle. Later that day, there was another phone call. It was Victor. “I wanted to tell him I was so proud of him,” Victor says. “He was busy, I know.”

Lourdes was angry that Victor had called. “ ‘It was
my
special day,’ my mom thought,” Alex said in 1996. “He had no right to be a part of it.”

Alex didn’t want to look back. He didn’t want his excitement clouded by the most injurious loss of his life. He only wanted to look ahead.

Chapter Four

The abandoned boy within Alex Rodriguez made him particularly gullible to the infl uence of successful, authoritative men, so it was easy for Scott Boras to manipulate him like a sock pup-pet. The bigger challenge for Boras was that of orchestrating Alex’s negotiations with the Seattle Mariners from behind the curtain, out of sight.

Alex said whatever Boras told him to say during the summer of 1993, even though Boras wasn’t— offi cially— his agent. That public role went to Alex’s mother, Lourdes, and his half sister, Susy, in a cynical ruse to conform to NCAA rules so the number one draft pick could maintain his college eligibility, a bargaining chip Boras cherished.

Boras represented many of the top players in baseball, and he had a reputation for keeping prized amateurs off the market to
maximize his leverage in negotiations. “Trust me,” he would tell them, “I know what’s best for you.” Alex was an ideal client in that regard. He performed on cue, sounding hypnotized when speaking to reporters the afternoon the Mariners called J. D. Arteaga’s house to tell Alex he was offi cially their man. He had rehearsed his message to the club in the bathroom mirror six times. As the thrill of being the top pick dissipated, he fi red a warning shot at the Mariners through the media.

“Right now, I’m going to the University of Miami, and every day I’m unsigned means I’m closer to going to college,” Alex told reporters. “But if circumstances are right, I wouldn’t mind going pro.”

The latter part of that statement was an ad lib. Alex was nervous and longing to sign because, despite his enviable position as the top pick, he didn’t want his mother to work as a waitress anymore; he didn’t want to risk injury; he didn’t want to destroy his family’s dreams of wealth and comfort. But Boras played on the fl ip side of Alex’s insecurities, telling him the Mariners were lowballing him, that it was a bargain-hunting organization that didn’t deserve his special talents. He told Alex he had a chance to make history for the kind of money a top pick could command. He told Alex he deserved to be paid more for his extraordinary gifts. He told Alex what the insecure teen wanted to hear.

“Boras was messing with his head,” says a Rodriguez family friend. “Alex didn’t know what hit him, but all he’d heard from everyone was ‘Boras is the best.’ He’d seen his picture in a magazine.”

Boras was accustomed to being bad-mouthed by GMs, other agents, and even family members of his clients. “The greedy agent,” he once said mockingly of his reputation. “When you bring a player to a team, they don’t reward you for it— the team recruited him. But if you take a player, the team didn’t lose him— the agent took him away. For money. Everything is about money; nothing is
about anything you do to accentuate the performance of the player.

None of that is ever talked about. It’s money. It’s contract. It’s not talent assessment. It’s not doing things that help the player— his career, his life, his family. It’s money. I used to fi ght that battle early on. I stopped. I go into a city now, and I say, ‘Okay, where’s my horns?’ ”

Boras relished his blackhat reputation, and Alex admired his fi re, his taste for confrontation, in part because those were qualities Alex knew
he
didn’t possess. Despite that, Alex spent the summer of 1993 in anguish, tormented by an internal tug-of- war between the security he sought for his family and the disrespect Boras had convinced him the Mariners were showing him. Ron Shapiro, the agent who had nearly landed Rodriguez, thinks Alex might have made a bit less money in his career but been much happier. “This is strictly my refl ection, but as I’ve watched his career progress he has fulfi lled everything I thought he would as one of the great players to play this game, but I think he’s gotten sidetracked along the way by the lights,” Shapiro says. “I hope he ends up a happy person, but I sometimes fear that may elude him.”

Boras hardly fi t the suave image that usually appealed to Alex.

He had mousy hair and short, thick fi ngers that made opposing parties feel as if they were gripping a ham when they shook his hand. Often dressed in jeans, he would come to meetings carrying a weathered leather satchel that looked as if it had been found under the desk in a lit professor’s offi ce. It had ferried the paperwork for dozens of megadeals over the years, and the handle had been replaced repeatedly. “I’m close to that leather,” Boras once said.

He didn’t introduce his clients to Hollywood stars or seduce them with invitations to music industry award shows. He was all about bottom lines, driven by a philosophy that dictated eliminating frills because they would diminish his persona as a bare-knuckled deal maker. Boras once boasted to
Sports Illustrated
, “I don’t cater to clients.”
Instead, he massaged their self-esteem by pumping them up with grandiose evaluations of their worth. Bigger-than- life images always appealed to Alex. Boras was a master architect when it came to building myths. “He knew how to play to his client,” Woodward recalls. “He was an expert at knowing what strings to pull.” At times, Boras sounded like a proud father psyching his child up for the biggest game of his life—
Nobody can beat you; nobody’s better—
in a voice that resonated deep within Alex. “His father had left the family,” Jongewaard recalls. “His dad was an ex-player, so . . .”