Alex Rodriguez, a former three-time Most Valuable Player Award winner and a present tv persona, claimed all through a radio look on Thursday that he was once keen to take considerably much less money to signal with the New York Mets all through his foray into free company in wintry weather 2000.
“I told my agent Scott Boras that I would take a 50% haircut to come to New York and play for the Mets,” Rodriguez said during an appearance on the Evan & Tiki Show. “I just thought it was a perfect story, for me personally, for the Mets, for baseball.
“I advised them pay me 50% much less, and I awoke to the New York Post headline ’24 plus 1,’ and I stated ‘No, I do not want anything else, I would like much less.'”
A New York Times article from the time offers greater context on the “24 plus 1” quote from then-Mets general manager Steve Phillips. Phillips, briefly, felt that Rodriguez and Boras’ calls for would have remoted him from his teammates, a dynamic that Phillips felt would turn out unworkable:
That could have been sufficient to present Phillips pause, however the common supervisor indexed Boras’s need to have a separate advertising and marketing body of workers and an administrative center for Rodriguez at his house stadium. Boras requested for 4 staff to strictly deal with Rodriguez’s off-field responsibilities, some other baseball govt stated. The Mets have 4 full-time staff within the media members of the family division. Phillips indicated a non-public airplane could have additionally been asked in addition to a ”billboard presence within the town,” which some other baseball respectable showed.
Rodriguez as a substitute signed a 10-year pact value $252 million with the Texas Rangers. He spent 3 years with the Rangers, excelling in my view whilst the staff did not win greater than 73 video games. The Rangers, deciding they’d be not able to build a aggressive staff with Rodriguez’s wage at the books, then traded him to the New York Yankees previous to the 2004 season.
The Yankees industry materialized most effective after a deal to the Boston Red Sox were vetoed by means of the avid gamers’ union because of Rodriguez’s try to voluntarily scale back his wage.
As for the concept that Rodriguez would have taken 50% much less to enroll in the Mets … smartly, that is tricky to imagine. Perhaps he was once keen to take much less money, however 50% turns out extremely not likely. Rodriguez has confirmed prior to now that he can turn into excitable and, most likely, slightly vulnerable to overstatement when speaking about eventualities that by no means got here to go. For instance, here’s what Rodriguez said in 2018 about his past desire to become a part of the Red Sox franchise:
“At the time the Yankees weren’t even part of the equation,” he stated. “They had a great shortstop in (Derek) Jeter; they had won four championships over the last eight years or so.
“So I used to be like, that is best possible. This creates more or less a Magic (Johnson) – (Larry) Bird situation: Great for baseball, nice for us, each shortstops, beautiful excellent.”
Still, in case you are a Mets fan, you’ll be able to most effective marvel how the early 2000s would’ve performed out in a different way if Rodriguez had ended up becoming a member of the staff.