Rodriguez, Alex

Alex Rodriguez, in full Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez, byname A-Rod, (born July 27, 1975, New York City, New York, U.S.), American professional baseball player, a noted power hitter who was considered one of the greatest talents in the history of the sport but whose career was in many ways overshadowed by his use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Rodriguez and his family moved to his father’s native Dominican Republic when Alex was four, but they later relocated to Miami, Florida. There he became an excellent ballplayer at Westminster Christian High School, and in 1993 the Seattle Mariners selected Rodriguez as the first overall pick in the Major League Baseball (MLB) draft. He made his debut with the Mariners at age 18, playing shortstop.

Rodriguez’s first successful season came in 1996, when he accumulated a league-best .358 batting average with 36 home runs and 123 runs batted in. Over the next six seasons with the team, he continued to produce outstanding offensive statistics, most notably in 1998, when he became the third player in league history to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in the same season. Before the 2001 season, when Rodriguez was a free agent, the Texas Rangers signed him to a 10-year $252 million contract, the richest contract ever given to an athlete at the time.

With the Rangers, Rodriguez continued to have great offensive seasons. He won American League (AL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) honours in 2003 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, to win his second AL MVP title. At Yankee Stadium on August 4, 2007, at age 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 54 home runs and 156 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 play-offs, 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.