| Friday, July 14
By Dan Le Batard
ESPN The Magazine |
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He is the most powerful man in baseball.
Even though he is but a boy.
|  | | Alex Rodriguez has mind-boggling hitting stats for a shortstop, yet he will be playing for less money than journeyman pitcher Tim Belcher in 2000. |
He owns a shortstop's glove.
A first baseman's bat.
A model's smile.
A prince's style.
A starving man's hunger.
A lottery winner's future.
And a 2-year-old's why-why-why curiosity.
The most powerful man in baseball plays cards and smokes cigars in a Four Seasons suite with Michael Jordan.
He can walk into any Armani store and take whatever he wishes for free because of a deal he has with the fashion designer.
He'll drive all over a city looking for the perfect bottle of wine.
Allow him only one word to describe himself, and he chooses "class." He watched the owners of the Mariners literally push an offer across the table -- probably worth at least $150 million, guaranteed -- but he politely pushed the envelope back without so much as looking at it.
Then he went to a restaurant with a friend and had spelling competitions on napkins.
When he hit his 40th home run in 1998, becoming the only infielder to join the 40-40 club, he cried as he rounded the bases.
He had a poster of Cal Ripken over his bed once, but now he hangs at Ripken's home all the time.
Waiting to become a free agent after this season, he'll probably get the largest contract in the
history of sports.
One that'll make Kevin Garnett's $126 million look like something you'd find in the pocket of your jeans after doing laundry.
He couldn't afford the snacks and sodas other kids were eating and drinking at his Little League games, and he remembers that on days he doesn't much feel like doing his running.
His body is insured this season for more than $50 million.
He'll sing Aretha Franklin's "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" out loud in his car every time because he is, to use his words, "old school."
He owns a 45-foot boat named Sweet Swing.
He asks a million questions.
My god, how he asks questions.
He asks his bench coach about other shortstops.
Asks Madonna how she manages to keep reinventing herself, staying current over
three decades.
Asks reporters about the quality of his answers.
Asks Sylvester Stallone about art.
Asks Edgar Martinez about vitamins.
Asks Jordan about how he stayed hungry.
Asks Outback Steakhouse's CEO and Pizza Hut's president how to keep employees motivated.
Asks Ripken how to shake hands properly.
Says teammate Dan Wilson, "You can tell how eager he is to learn, but shouldn't we all be asking him the questions?"
The most powerful man in baseball spent part of his off-season in a community college classroom, taking writing classes.
Got an A on the paper about how to prepare for a big league game.
And another on the one about how he would make Nike a better company.
When he speaks at schools, he'll put down the microphone and ask one of the kids if he can have a hug.
"Mr. Milk and Cookies," former teammate David Segui called him. That, or "Mr. Clean."
Mr. Milk and Cookies will talk on the phone with his best buddy, who happens to play shortstop for the New York Yankees, and they'll be giggling about girls in one breath and talking about their next $100 million in the next.
He has gone out to buy one or two pairs of dress shoes, and somehow returned with
21 pairs instead and a credit card bill for $9,000.
He'll be hitting late at the training facility and, next thing you know, he's taking 27 minor leaguers to dinner and picking up the $1,100 tab.
Says teammate Stan Javier, "I could tell you a million good things in a million good interviews and not do him justice. Just watch him when he walks into the clubhouse.
"Watch how he enters, how he talks to everybody, how he makes eye contact, how he carries himself with class. So many players are better than others and act like it. He is the best, but it's like he doesn't even know it."
Oh, he knows it.
About the gamble of leaving at least $150 million on the table and waiting for free agency, he says simply, "I trust myself."
He took 50 friends with him for a party/vacation in the Dominican Republic this off-season.
And his personal trainer, too.
He and his trainer ran eight miles a day, his trainer saying now, "Even on vacation, we trained to the very highest levels of exhaustion. Quarter-mile sprints, 40-yard dash, stretching, jogging. He's very, very intense about getting better."
The most powerful man in baseball says he'd be a math teacher if he couldn't hit a ball 450 feet.
He tries to sign his autograph especially crisp and clean for children because, "I was a kid
a little while ago, you know?"
When his Miami home was robbed twice within a month, burglars made off with $43,000 worth of Armani, $25,000 in cash from a safe, two Rolexes and $5,000 worth of cognac and cigars.
In his first full major league season, he led
his league in batting average, runs, total bases,
doubles, grand slams . . . and marriage proposals received.
He describes himself as "insecure" about the motives of women. If he could ask God one question, he says, it would be about his future wife.
He will be playing for $4.5 million this year.
In other words, less than Tim Belcher.
He doesn't wear an earring.
Doesn't have a tattoo.
Doesn't watch his home runs.
Even though he already has more homers, at 24, than all but three of the shortstops in the Hall.
Says his manager, Lou Piniella: "I don't know what he can improve."
His reading, apparently.
He is trying to learn how to read faster and retain more.
He reads five books at a time: one will be by J.D. Salinger and another by Rodman's ex-wife.
He just got done with What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School.
He says he has been asleep at 9 p.m. every night this spring.
He figures his wardrobe is worth $200,000.
Ask him if his talents have outgrown Seattle, if he wouldn't be better off somewhere else, and he says, "The only stage I need is the World Series."
You can follow the framed footsteps of his journey on a wall in his mom's house in South Miami.
There he is very little, swinging a too-big bat.
There he is a little larger, whipping a ball across a diamond.
And there he is, all grown up, with an arm around Ken Griffey Jr.
It is a pretty impressive thing, seeing Lourdes Navarro's boy grow up right before your eyes.
But to show you what she has demanded of him, always, she walks past all the pictures and trophies and stops at a plaque engraved with her favorite quote: "Anyone can forget about talent, but if you're also a good person, your name will be remembered for a long time."
The year he finished second in the MVP voting to Juan Gonzalez, he spent the winter living here, with his mother, in a bedroom so small that his $3,200 suits literally spilled out of the closet.
He would have been MVP if just one writer had flip-flopped his first- and second-place votes.
He said all the right things in a conference call that day, like, aw, shucks, how can I be the best player in the league when I'm not even the best player on my own team, but when he hung up, he was major league pissed.
And he remembers that on days he doesn't much feel like doing his running.
His coaches have to ask him repeatedly to please stop working so hard.
He says, "Michael Jordan told me the way he kept the crown was by always outworking everyone else because he knew everyone was always coming after him. You can sneak up on people when you are 18, 19, 20. It's tougher when you're established. Before, I'd see 13, 14, 15 pitches that I could drive in a game. Now, I see one, two or three, so I have to be better."
He has a penthouse apartment that has the best view in Seattle -- of snow-capped Mt. Rainier, of Safeco Field, of the Space Needle.
But the Mariners should know he's renting.
His trainer was at his home at about 6 every morning this off-season, banging on the door for the first of his thrice-daily workouts, yelling, "We are on a mission, sir!"
So the most powerful man in baseball had T-shirts made with those words on the front and gave them to each of his teammates this spring.
He says, "I'm focusing on what I haven't attained, not what I have. A lot has come to me early. I don't want to get consumed with that. Winners live in the present tense. People who come up short are consumed with future or past.
"I want to be living in the now. My goal is to play one full game in the now, but I haven't even gotten past the first inning yet. I start thinking about where my mom is or if my dogs have been fed. The average human has 2,000 thoughts a day. The really accomplished have 1,500 because you can focus longer. I need to learn how to focus longer."
Says teammate Jay Buhner, "To be that talented and work that hard, he's a freak of nature. He's the first to get here and last to leave. He wants to be the best player who ever played." So he carries Heat coach Pat Riley's motivational book, The Winner Within, in his briefcase.
"My bible," he calls it.
Ask him for a philosophy to live by, and he says, "Enjoy your sweat because hard work doesn't guarantee success, but without it you don't have a chance."
He plays golf with Nike chairman Phil Knight.
He reads the newspaper in this order:
Business.
Lifestyle.
Sports.
He says, "Athletes want to be businessmen because they can bounce or hit a ball? Are you kidding me? I'll get undressed if I try to be a businessman. I'm trying to focus on catching or hitting a ball eight hours a day while businessmen are on the Internet, studying, learning. The businessman has the same advantage over me in that world that I would have if a CEO tried to strike me out. I'm not going to match up with you, ever, unless it's a fight I know I can win. I'm not impulsive at all -- except about buying clothes. That's my biggest weakness."
The most powerful man in baseball remembers when $60 seemed like all the money in the world, remembers his weary mother coming home from one of her two waitressing jobs and, as a special treat, letting him count the tips on her bed.
And he remembers that on days he doesn't much feel like doing his running.
With his father absent and his mother working so hard, he let the television teach him.
He got only two teams on cable -- Braves and Mets -- so he started right then, at age 10, modeling himself on Dale Murphy and Keith Hernandez.
"Because they were so professional," he says.
Says teammate Edgar Martinez, "You can learn a lot of things at the park, but maturity isn't one of them. He brought that with him here. He had it the day he arrived."
When he got to the big leagues, he was so young that his mother said she wanted to hold his hand all the way to the dugout, just as she did when he was little.
Just 18, he was the game's youngest player in more than a decade, shaving once a month and preferring arcades to nightclubs.
He was so uptight about his debut that he walked up to 43-year-old teammate Goose Gossage just before the game and greeted him with the words, "You nervous, kid?"
His Web site, arod.com, is particularly popular with females.
His yellow Lab's name is Shorty.
The dog's last name is Stop.
He doesn't end phone conversations by saying, "Good-bye."
He ends them by saying, "Keep working hard."
There were reports of a cool relationship with Griffey, but he describes it as "big-brother, little-brother: You spend 200 days a year with someone, you're going to hug, scratch, bitch, love."
Asked to describe Griffey using only one word, he goes with "Superman."
He was on his boat in January, with that best buddy from New York, the one who plays shortstop for the Yankees, and as they sat at the front, awash in sunshine, feet over the edge, his buddy said, "Wow! Will you look at how far we've come?"
And he replied, "We've got to stay hungry. We're still not even a third of the way there."
He says, "This is how I define grace: You're on the main stage, and it looks like it has been rehearsed 100 times, everything goes so smoothly. That's where I get my confidence and success, from knowing that I have an edge because I know I'm prepared. You aren't scared of taking a test when you are ready for it. My first couple of years, I was just kind of swimming, trying not to drown, but now . . . "
Well, now the most powerful man in baseball is just waiting for the yacht to come pick him up.
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