Original subtitles

Are you good?

Set.

Let me see this.

Does the collar look good?

Put your arm down so we can see it.

It's so in shadow that I think...

Yeah. That's fine.

It's fine?

Let's deal with it off the top.

Are you going to be honest

about the performance-enhancing drugs?

I mean, I'll give you

two answers to the same question.

You tell me which one you'd rather have.

Well, what happened in the PD was, you know, it was like,

you know, what happens in baseball

is like, everybody's doing it.

And, you know, there was 15 of us,

and they gave me the longest of the 15.

I mean, but look.

At the end of the day, I'm a pretty fucking great

baseball player.

I'm going to appeal it.

Yeah, that's number one.

Number two is like, yeah, I fucked up.

I knew the rules. I broke them.

I was a dumb-ass.

I served the longest suspension in Major League history,

and...

And it sucked, but I deserved it.

2-2, last of the 12th.

The 20-year-old Alex Rodriguez.

Right center.

The ball game is over, and Rodriguez is the hero.

There's nothing that I don't

feel comfortable talking about.

You know, I mean, there's so much out there,

and I've never really told my story.

Sometimes it's hard to fathom

how young he really is,

but old enough to rank right at the top

of all Major League shortstops in batting and homers.

Swung on hit, high in the air.

He's done it!

Alex Rodriguez has made Major League Baseball history.

The youngest player ever to hit 500 home runs.

It's been a life and a career of some highs

and some very dark lows.

Since he came to the Yankees,

New York fans have had trouble

warming up to the enigmatic Rodriguez.

A number of respected sportswriters

called you a "gold-plated phony."

"Pay-Rod in Pinstripes."

They said you upstaged more World Series games

than you actually played in.

I don't think I'm in a position

to give anyone a lesson, but I do want to share

the mistakes that I've made openly.

A-Rod is once again a lightning rod

for controversy.

The highest paid player in the history of baseball

might be one step away from losing it all.

There are new allegations tying Rodriguez

to performance-enhancing drugs.

Did you do anything that they accused you of doing?

-No. -Nothing?

Nothing.

I mean, honestly, I don't fear the ramifications

because it doesn't matter now.

I made the mistake.

I paid the price.

His actions were beyond comprehension.

I think 211 games was a very fair penalty.

I was suspended for an entire year.

I lost tens of millions of dollars.

I was humiliated with my family,

my brother, my daughters.

So as far as going, we'll go anywhere.

Well hit.

He's done it again!

All right, let's roll sound.

Rolling.

Camera. Camera rolling.

Should I do one of these... like, you know how

you do these step-ins and you're like,

"All right, I'm ready."

Yeah, yeah, you want to?

Yeah, might as well.

Swing and a miss.

But Kansas strikes out the side.

Alex Rodriguez goes out with a victory.

The final totals in the 22-year career of A-Rod:

a 295 batting average, 2,086 runs batted in,

3,115 hits, and 696 home runs.

One of the greatest careers in baseball history,

and it concludes in pinstripes tonight.

How do you think most people view you?

I mean, I would just say it's complicated.

Um...

I mean, the highs and the lows are so high and so low.

I think it was hard for people to truly understand me

and get to know me,

because I was doing the same thing in real time.

I can't say enough about these fans.

I've given these fans a lot of headaches over the years,

and I've disappointed a lot of people.

But like I've always said, you don't have to be

defined by your mistakes.

How you come back matters too.

Early on, I was just a kid,

like, in this innocent climb, and hopeful,

sometimes hopeless, a dreamer.

And I think over time,

I kind of started losing my way a little bit.

And then I felt like A-Rod took over.

Is this Alex or A-Rod we're talking to right now?

This is Alex.

I'd count Alex as a Hall of Famer.

Truthfully, I know he had some problems

with the drugs and so forth,

but this guy here didn't need to do that.

He had all the skill in the world.

One thing you have to get used to

being in Westminster Christian is

the number of baseball scouts.

At a regular practice, 12 Major League scouts,

most of them here to see Alex Rodriguez,

possibly the number one pick in this summer's amateur draft.

I saw this guy.

He was a grown man already coming out of high school.

Beautiful swing.

You could tell he was polished.

He played shortstop so well,

and we had the number one pick in the draft.

So we're ready to go with round one.

First pick goes to Seattle.

Seattle selects number 0470, Rodriguez.

Seattle selection is number 470, Alexander Rodriguez.

Rodriguez, shortstop, Westminster Christian School,

Miami.

Go, pick it up, bro.

Hello?

Uh-huh.

This is Alex.

Seattle.

When he signed, I knew he was going to be different.

A Dominican American, well-spoken,

good looking, tremendous talent,

tremendous work ethic.

I thought he was going to just be

the next Magic Johnson of his sport.

What are your thoughts? Number one pick.

Well, I'm very excited to be the number one pick.

It's a great honor.

I'm thrilled right now, and I'm going to enjoy

this day for a very long time.

So I'm very excited, and we'll see what happens.

It'll be interesting.

Seattle's a long way from Miami.

Yeah, but I mean, baseball's a business,

and, you know, I can take it.

First pick.

He was a baby.

He was a little kid.

So having to meet the expectations

of being Alex Rodriguez,

the number one pick with all the hype...

You... like, you can't fail.

Like, you know, that's a lot of expectations on a kid.

This game tonight almost transcends

anything in baseball this evening,

because it is the debut

of 18-year-old Alex Rodriguez.

Alex Rodriguez coming out

of Westminster High School in Miami,

the highest rated high school prospect in history.

One thing is for sure.

Young Alex Rodriguez is going to be exposed

to more baseball in the next couple of weeks

than he has his entire career.

Be interesting to see how the young man handles it.

A few months ago, I was at my high school prom.

A few months before that,

I was playing in front of 300 people,

and now I'm at Fenway Park.

First Major League at bat for Alex Rodriguez.

He's a couple of weeks shy of his 19th birthday.

I've never played in a stadium

that has the second and third deck, right?

So many people all over, loud, intimidating.

Alex Rodriguez.

I remember my mom, my brother,

my sister being up in the stands.

And I'm glad they were far away,

because my knees were shaking.

First pick in the entire draft.

In 1993, swings at his first Major League pitch.

Cooper made a nice play.

I remember going up, you know, telling him,

"Hey, can you tell him, you know, his family arrived?"

And he came out for about two minutes,

and you could tell he was, like, kind of nervous.

It was the first time he was really going to,

you know, step into a grown man's world.

After the game, my teammates all went out

to a bar to have a drink.

And of course, I couldn't go.

I couldn't go for another two or three years.

So that was like, OK, this is different.

And a number back toward the mound,

got a chance to be a base hit.

Cooper will have to make everything perfectly,

and does not.

And there it is, his first Major League hit.

An infield hit, chopper right by the mound.

He was in the big leagues right away.

Steal her.

We knew he was going to be good.

There was no question.

We didn't know that he would be as great as it was.

He's going to be a Cal Ripken type

prototype shortstop that can carry

some of the offensive load also.

And, you know, we're looking forward to seeing him develop.

There wasn't anything he couldn't do

on a baseball field.

Could run, could hit for power,

could drive in runs.

But at the same time, he still needed

just a little more maturity.

He was a little insecure.

The 19th inning now.

You could have won it in the ninth.

And if Alex made a mistake,

he'd get down on himself a little bit.

I used to tell him every day how good he was.

You go out there and let your skills go, young man.

You're so good, it's unbelievable.

Back hand.

It was so important for him to be the best player,

and he loved to please.

Imagine the shortstop goes deep, or you play by ear...

how do you do that?

If you take...

if it's a chopper, if it's a chopper,

you're going to read it coming across, right?

But you're going to see

where it's hit before you see how hard...

I can tell you this, that baseball was

definitely my first love.

There's nothing like walking into a baseball field

and seeing all this beautiful green grass.

There's a romance about it,

and it feels like infinite possibilities.

Reggie Jackson has seen two pitches

in the strike zone tonight,

two, and he's hit them both in the seats.

Bye.

Goodbye.

Oh, what a blow!

What a way to top it off!

Forget about who the most valuable player is

in the World Series.

From the time I was born in New York City,

in Washington Heights, my early memories

being 1, 2, 3 years old was watching the Yankees

and the Mets game with my dad.

♪ You're all my dreams ♪

♪ My one ♪

Every day, Alex would sit on Victor's lap.

I would sit next to Victor and watch the game.

♪ In my heart ♪

And the Yankees are winning the World Series.

♪ You start ♪

I loved watching the games with Dad

because I know how much he loved it.

That's kind of where it started.

♪ You I want to share ♪

Dad was a really good baseball player.

He probably stopped playing a level below professional.

He was a catcher, and these two fingers

right here, the middle fingers were all twisted.

I remember him telling me,

this happened to me when I was a catcher.

That's why you always have to put your hand

behind as a pitcher just throwing the ball.

Always protect your hand

and always put your thumb underneath.

And just the first 10 years of my life,

I remember talking baseball every day with him.

Victor's passion was Alex.

That was his love and joy, yeah.

And it wasn't... there was no doubt about that.

There was so many times that I would be leaving the house

or coming in, and Alex would be

in the room just sharing that time.

Reading the newspaper together, playing, talking baseball,

talking business.

All his coaching was more mental, strategy,

how to think about the game.

He also played chess.

So he was a thinking man.

Poised, quiet, good with numbers.

And my mom was opposite.

My mom just... she would just scream at me

and just tell me exactly what she's feeling.

I always remember having, like, big dreams

and, like, thinking big because I just saw the world

through my father's kind of prism.

We had a great life.

My mother worked at General Motors,

and my father was an entrepreneur.

And we had a shoe business in our apartment

in Washington Heights, which was just, you know,

a driver and a wedge away from Yankee Stadium.

But around 1979, the streets of New York

were kind of getting a little bit too dangerous.

There was a lot of gang violence.

Drugs were starting to become very prevalent.

Guys dealing dope in the corner, you know,

and we lived on the first floor, so you see everything.

And so my mother, she knew that

that's not the environment that she wanted us to be raised in.

Oldest city in the new world

is the capital of the Dominican Republic,

900 miles southeast of Miami,

on the island of Hispaniola.

Both my parents are immigrants,

so we packed up our bags

and went down to the Dominican Republic.

And baseball is like a religion.

To think an island this small

can produce so many great players,

the passion, it's hard to explain now.

My dad on Sunday would take me to Quisqueya,

which in Dominican Republic is like saying Yankee Stadium.

If you ever go to Dominican winter leagues,

you see the passion.

You know, you got the instruments.

You got people drinking in the stands,

or people dancing in the aisles

if they hit a home run.

It was everything.

And then the success of all the Dominican players

in American baseball.

Hits it high, hits it deep to left center field.

Pedro Guerrero, Tony Fernández, shortstop.

Backhanded by Fernandez, the throw, got him.

George Bell, left fielder.

They both played with the Blue Jays.

You know what that is?

"You are a terrific baseball player."

Yeah, that sound... sounds kind of Spanish,

but it don't sound the way it's supposed to, you know.

It's like saying Michael Jordan or Tom Brady

here in America, right?

Like, these guys were iconic.

That was around the time where I said, I have no choice.

I got to be on that field one day.

You could see it.

You know, it was like school, go to practice,

school, go to a game.

He was relentless with it.

I'll never forget this.

I was seven years old, and we're playing ball

with my buddies, and it was getting dark.

And my father pulls up and he says,

"Hey, Alex, you and your friends..."

Says there's no baseball game.

Do you guys want to go watch a movie or go get ice cream?

And that was with seven people, seven of my buddies.

And all six of them at the same time said, "Yes!"

And I said, "No, we're... we're playing.

We're not going to stop playing."

That's when I thought I was a little different

because the reaction was so, like, loud and clear,

like, ice cream and movie over ball.

And I was like, that's not even a choice.

It was six years ago that a rare 19-year-old

took his place in the Mariners lineup.

And today, there's a new kid turning heads

for Seattle, Alex Rodriguez.

History repeats itself a little bit

with Junior being here at 19 years old,

making the club.

That gives me a little bit of inspiration.

I met him in '93 when he came up.

Big, strong kid.

Physically, he was there.

I mean, at 18, he was there.

Well, I know what he's going through,

being a first round pick, and being thrown in

the big leagues at an early age.

And he's handled it real well.

-Oh! -Oh!

Oh!

He's still young.

He's still trying to figure out who he is.

He's still growing into that body.

He's still learning.

All you got to do is what I did.

He was fortunate enough that he didn't have to

be the man of the team.

Right up the middle.

No runs on two hits.

And now Griffey takes him deep, deep, deep,

putting this one on the scoreboard.

Just watching Griffey, it was like

our version of Michael Jordan.

Right back to the track, to the fence,

makes a leap, and makes the catch!

I would turn around sometimes and watch this guy,

and some of the balls he would get to,

and the things he would do on the baseball field...

Against the wall, jumps up, and he makes the catch.

I'd never seen anyone else do,

and I just marveled at the way he dealt with the media,

the way he dealt with fans.

You know, I grew up in a household where it was,

let other people talk about you.

You don't need to say anything.

You know, your game will speak for itself.

I won't do it.

Seems like you're doing it, young buck.

That was like a masterclass for me as an 18-year-old,

to have that role model.

We ain't gotta wait for Jay.

And we had a great Mariner culture.

We have three Hall of Famers on that team.

We have Ken Griffey, Randy Johnson,

and Edgar Martinez.

And they were all good, good, good guys.

So it just made my time in Seattle

a perfect place for me to develop my skills

without any distractions.

-Let's go, rook. -Let's go?

You got to pick them up.

Oh.

The thing is, when you don't have to carry a team

and you're young, you can have a lot of fun

because there's no pressure on you.

You can go out there and relax and play.

Here is Alex Rodriguez stepping in

and leading it off and taking the fastball

from Flash Gordon for a strike.

Alex trying to jump out of a little bit of a slump.

He has struggled lately.

0 for his last 16.

Young players, you got to teach them the right way.

He swung at real bad pitches and struck out.

And I said, truthfully, you've got to learn the strike zone.

You got to get more disciplined.

In Baltimore.

So three pitches, and see you later, Alex.

They would throw me, like, split fingers in the dirt,

and I would swing at them every time.

Swing and a miss.

Struck him out.

And for the third time,

young Alex Rodriguez goes down.

I remember facing Dennis Eckersley,

Hall of Famer,

and he was playing in Oakland at the time,

and he would throw me sliders.

They were, like, these frisbees.

And I've never seen pitches like this in my life.

And they would, like, start behind me,

and they would end up, like, in the dugout.

Swing and a miss, strike three, two outs.

My second year as a 19-year-old,

I was demoted five times from Seattle to Tacoma.

And I remember the fourth time I got sent down,

driving on the highway back to Tacoma,

just, like, so angry and like, what am I doing here?

I should be a sophomore in college,

and I made the wrong decision.

And so I called my mom up.

And of course, like, 2:00 in the morning,

I said, "Mom, all right, I'm coming home."

And she said, "First of all, you woke me up."

"Number two, you're not going anywhere,

because if you come home, I'm changing the locks."

And she goes, "You toughen up,

and you do what you have to do."

I'm the luckiest man in the world

because I have a great mother.

Here's a lady who took upon two jobs

to support me and my brothers and sisters.

He want to play all the time.

My mom is tough.

My mom is no joke.

She's one of the bravest people I've ever met.

I remember when I was 2, 3, 4 years old,

her getting up at 5:00 in the morning,

jumping on the train, going to work,

and coming home, you know, right before dinner.

And she would do that every day.

Very blue collar, head down, go to work,

doesn't want much glory, competitive,

and just impeccable work ethic.

That made a big impact on me.

So then I said, you know what?

This is not anyone's fault.

I got to play better.

And I remember going home that off season.

And boy, I went to work.

I had enough experience to know exactly

what I needed to work on.

And it was just to become a better situational hitter.

The secret with baseball is to always move runners

when you make an out.

And that's what situational hitting does,

move the runner from second to third

so he can score on a sacrifice fly,

hit the ball behind the runner when your right hand hitter

hit that first base hole.

All my coaches taught me that the scoreboard

will tell you how to play,

meaning if you're up 3, if you're down 3,

all those things will dictate the next move,

a lot like chess.

You know, people think a perfect swing is a home run.

It's not.

The guy throws a pitch low and away, and you stay inside,

and you stay on top of it,

and you hit it down the left field line.

That could be a perfect swing.

You know, that's the mental side.

He just had to learn, like everybody else,

what to do day in and day out, how to get better the next day.

For me, the grass is not a hard play at all.

It's a short throw.

And I'm coming that way too, if that makes sense.

So if the ball is hit hard low,

always take a little more of an angle,

because he can come in still on the chopper.

You don't want it to get by both of you.

You want to prevent that.

The thing I remember the most

is how smart he was baseball-wise

early in his career.

It takes players more time to develop

those type of baseball skills.

Here it is, for the win.

And truthfully, Alex, always almost innate in him.

57,467,

the third largest regular season crowd

in the Kingdome's history.

Into the last of the 12th inning in a 2-2 tie.

And the rookie, 20 years old, Alex Rodriguez,

with a chance to be the hero.

Still a young guy, but he's big and strong,

and he's shown power in the minor leagues.

Right center.

The ball game is over, and Rodriguez is the hero.

Not that I was running out of time, because I was 20,

but it was go time.

And that ball is belted deep to left field,

and get out the rye bread and the mustard, Grandma.

It is grand salami time!

It's his third grand slam home run of the year.

Third year, you know, he was like, OK.

He came in different,

and you know, the rest is history.

Fly ball deep to right field by Rodriguez.

Going, going, goodbye, baseball.

I didn't take anything for granted when I came in.

I came in ready to play.

He won the batting title

his second year in the Big Leagues.

There wasn't a pitch he couldn't hit.

Man, this kid is unbelievable.

He was going to win me a game with a two or three run homer.

Fastball belted.

My, oh, my!

Alex Rodriguez with a grand slam home run.

A lot of players, when it gets real tight,

they back off a little bit.

Well, Alex was better when the moment got bigger.

And that is hit well into right center field.

See you later.

There it is.

Alex Rodriguez is now a 40-40 player.

That was an unbelievable year.

Probably should have won the MVP.

From the Seattle Mariners, shortstop Alex Rodriguez.

Now he's really establishing himself in the All-Star game,

one of the top players in the league.

Well, great stop by A-Rod,

but I don't think he's going to get him.

He does get it!

My, oh, my!

What a play by Alex Rodriguez!

I'll never forget the great Dave Niehaus

said, "Hey, Alex, I hope you don't mind.

I called you A-Rod."

It kind of sticks.

It has a sound to it.

And a line drive.

It's speared by A-Rod.

What a catch by Alex.

Hot shot backhanded, deep and short, A-Rod.

Long throw.

Oh, they get Ripken.

And sure enough, it stuck.

The pitch swung on and belted.

Line drive, fly away, A-Rod.

His second home run of the ball game.

He is on fire.

He is blazing.

Alex Rodriguez with his eighth home run.

I see a young man turning into a star

and not changing much at all.

Good to see, really was.

At the age of 21, our next guest has become

the leading hitter in baseball, Alex Rodriguez.

So what was it like the first time you came up?

Were you scared? -Oh, yeah, I was...

You're scared now, aren't you?

Oh, yeah.

I always joke about it, but I didn't really know A-Rod.

You know?

I knew Alex, and A-Rod was, like,

a fictitious thing that people created,

and it was a persona.

It was a personality.

But for me, he was just Alex.

I met Cynthia right around when I was 20.

She had just graduated from Ohio State,

and we met at the gym.

Body and Soul in Coral Gables.

The whole gym was like the size of this room,

so it was easy for me to chase her around.

2,000 twice.

It's sold right here for $2,000.

All that money going to the Boys Girls Club of Miami.

Let's give this man a round of applause.

Cynthia!

Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain,

both sides play. -Hi, Michelle.

Hi.

I had no idea who he was.

I didn't follow baseball.

I wasn't into baseball.

I had no clue.

Cynthia's, like, very aloof.

Michael Jackson can walk in the room and she's like, what?

What? Who's here?

And I think it's, like, 50% believable.

The other one, I think, is her shtick,

but it worked on me anyways.

She was shy and, like, really smart.

She has a Greek background, which reminds me

a lot of my Latin background.

It's like family first, conservative.

He would approach me in the gym often,

and he was really interested in my college life,

I guess because he didn't have one.

Then after some small talk, he would always say,

do you want to grab some dinner?

And we had a great dinner,

and at that dinner, he said,

"You know we're going to end up getting married."

You know, I thought he was crazy.

He's like, "Yeah, we're definitely getting married."

OK.

I said, you know what?

I'm going to marry you,

and we're going to have two kids.

But, you know, someday I'm going to make a lot of money

and you're going to have to sign a prenuptial agreement.

How does that sound?

She goes, what a cocky son of a bitch.

I can see her.

She didn't say that, but I can see it.

Tell us a little bit more about kind of

your impressions of Alex

as you're first getting to know him.

Uh...

I... I felt sorry for him.

I did.

Um, he was a sweet guy.

Uh, he had a really big heart,

but he was so stunted when it came to

the natural development of a person.

He was so entrenched in baseball.

You know, he was told that's what he was going to do

for so long, and it's all he did.

He was, like, I mean, tunnel vision.

You know, Alex is a creature of habit,

and baseball was all he did.

If he wasn't hitting, he was throwing.

If he wasn't throwing, he was running.

If he wasn't running, he was watching videos,

different pitchers, studying.

He was, like, all in.

There was a lot of his life that he missed

and a lot of stages that we go through as children

into young adulthood that mold us and shape us,

and he didn't have those experiences.

And I could see where his family kind of

gave him the position of the head of the family

at a very young age.

And then once he shared more information about his father,

the picture became more clear.

Is there one challenge, or maybe the hardest thing

that you had to go through in life?

What would you say it was?

Probably being a young man,

a young boy at 10 when my father left us.

For me, that was a hard time.

Around age eight, Mom and Dad started having

conversations about getting back to the US.

I was excited to come back, but, you know,

1983 Miami was a completely different place.

You know, when we moved there,

we didn't know too many people.

We didn't know anybody, really.

And Victor couldn't find his place,

what he wanted to do.

I did hear my father talk about

how much he missed New York.

And I just remember that he was kind of a little bit in a funk.

And, you know, his coping mechanism

was drinking and smoking cigarettes.

He would drink these things like I drink water.

And I just thought that was normal...

cigarettes, drinking,

watching baseball at night.

That was our day every day.

And then he started playing, like,

more horses, gambling than working.

So it was, like, the trifecta.

And he was bored.

I think Alex was instinctively

seeing that his dad was disintegrating

in... emotionally.

And I just remember that deterioration,

in hindsight, kind of why he left.

What I remember was them telling me,

"Dad's going to take a trip to New York.

He's going to see if he can find his way."

But it was framed as, like, a temporary thing.

I mean, I didn't know if it was one week or one month

or one year, but never did I think it was forever.

And for, like, six months to a year,

I remember almost every night looking out the window,

thinking, OK, he's going to pull up.

It's just a matter of time.

And he never showed up.

That was a hell of a blow to take.

I did not know how we were going to survive without Dad,

because all I've known for 10 years

is my dad was the leader with my mom.

And we needed both incomes to really survive.

I remember her taking two jobs,

and then I prayed for time to slow down a little bit

for my mom, because I felt, like,

the pressure of every 30 days coming very quickly.

And that $525 for the rent was a lot of money for us.

At this point, I think Alex is 11,

and now he's, like, really into baseball.

It was religion.

My dad left a very empty home

and a huge vacancy in my life,

and baseball was, like, my happy place.

My mom was getting older, and I wanted to, you know,

make a good living so I can take care of Mom.

So my goal was always to get a scholarship

to go play baseball at the University of Miami.

And as I started developing more and more,

my aspirations started to go a little higher

than the University of Miami, a little higher

than just make it to the minor leagues.

Alex and two of his teammates have

already signed scholarships to Miami,

but the pros want him too.

On one hand, I was angry that he never reached out to me.

Being named all-American, graduating high school,

getting drafted number one.

Alex, why don't you come up and say hello to these folks?

And as I said, we're just very pleased, excited, and thankful.

But on the other hand, I was like,

I kind of admired it that he didn't, you know,

try to jump into my ship and kind of join the party.

I could hear, like, an angst in him,

like a yearning to reconnect.

And I felt that he needed to have a meeting with his dad.

At first, it was kind of like a hard "no."

I didn't want to open up those wounds again.

And then she started kind of working me

and telling me why this could be beneficial,

that I would have regrets

if he passes and we don't close the loop.

And he said, "OK, just arrange it."

So I called his cousin,

who knew where his dad was living.

She came back to me and said, "OK, I found him."

She said, "Don't scream at me."

"How would you feel if he comes out and visits us

for, like, three or four days?"

And I was like, "First of all, where did you find him?"

"What's he doing?

And does he even want to come?"

He left 14 years ago.

And she says, "I think this could be good."

And a couple of weeks, she kind of worked me,

and I finally agreed.

And I said, "OK, a couple conditions.

"One, it can't be, like, a primary city

"where you're going to have a bunch of media and eyeballs,

"because I don't want any photographs.

"And number two, we have to stay in a different hotel

"than the team, because I don't want

"the media asking me a million questions

in the middle of the season."

She said, "Fine, fine."

So we pick Minnesota.

He flew into Minnesota.

The first day, Cynthia picks him up,

takes him to, like, T.J. Maxx or something

and buys him four suits,

because he likes to wear suits all the time.

I knew immediately it was his dad,

because Alex, he loves his suits,

and he looked like him in stature.

And I went up to him, and he held my hand,

and he called me his daughter.

And he was just like... I don't know.

It was sad.

I thought, wow.

How did this happen?

We had our room.

He had his room.

And in the middle, we had a connecting suite

that we can meet,

and then we can go back to our room.

So as I walked in, I saw them both there.

And Cynthia's like, "Oh, here's your dad."

I'm like, "Great.

Hi, Dad. It's been 14 years."

I was hoping that they would rekindle,

and that, you know, some of the old wounds would heal,

and that they would have time together to share,

and that maybe they lost those formative years together,

but they could recapture something now.

The first two days was a lot of silence on my part,

and it felt awkward.

And I felt bad for Cynthia because she was like Judge Judy

in the middle, trying to, like, make small talk

and, like, a little joke here and a little joke there.

And I wasn't having it.

Did he say anything about having watched you play,

or why he didn't reach out

when you were on national television?

No, he didn't make, like, any excuses.

What he did say was that he has these big scrapbooks

with all my articles.

But that was pretty much it as far as...

I'm glad he didn't try to go down there,

because I wasn't going to have it anyways.

Like, really, not sure how I can ever forgive

what he left behind.

So I just made a point to say,

whatever's happened has happened.

Let's focus on today and kind of moving forward.

We're about to get

the series underway

here in Minneapolis

at the Metrodome.

A happy Father's Day to you all.

There's a young dad and a little jewel.

So nice to see the families out here.

For the next four games, he went every game.

He sat in the front row, right behind the dugout.

Fastball lined into left field for a base hit,

and that'll load him up.

And I'll never forget.

It was probably the best four games of my career.

And that pitch is lined into left field by A-Rod.

Double play ball, right there to A-Rod on the first.

Well-hit ball, deep to right field.

Going and going.

Upper deck.

Goodbye, baseball.

Opposite field two-run blast, off the bat of Alex Rodriguez.

I mean, I remember I was in such a zone.

Right back up the middle.

Base hit, Alex Rodriguez.

Home run, double, home run, double.

Right back up the middle, right between his legs.

And it was a lot of emotion.

Toward the hole, off the glove of Bell,

picked up by A-Rod, and he throws him out.

And I just put on a show for four days.

It was phenomenal.

Well, John Olerud has turned it on.

Fly ball deep to straightaway center field,

back to the track, to the wall.

Goodbye, baseball.

There's a lot of power behind that,

very strong in his hands.

430 feet away from home plate

is when that ball came down.

I remember it was, like, the third game,

and I see them both clapping up there,

and I look up for a second.

And I'm like, yeah, this is what you walked away from.

So yeah, fuck off.

Number 19 for Alex Rodriguez.

He is 4 for 5 this afternoon.

Did your teammates know what was going on?

Nope, not one of them.

And the Mariners roll over the Twins,

a final score of 10-2.

We'll be back with more from the Metrodome

on this Father's Day Sunday,

right after this timeout.

Those were the only four games

that he ever saw me play.

Of all the free agents soon to be on the market,

this young man will be the most coveted,

a guy who's already on his way

to being one of the best who's ever played.

And he's just in his mid-20s.

Alex was special because I'd get together with him

and speak in Spanish and talk about his childhood.

It goes to show you, mind over matter.

He still became the person and the player he became

because he had determination.

Rodriguez is again an MVP candidate.

He just missed the honor in 1996.

40-plus home runs the last three years,

and he also stole 40 bases.

So he is... he is a star.

This ball is drilled to deep left.

If it's fair, it's out of here,

and it hits the screen along the foul pole

for a Rodriguez home run.

How crushing would it be, just devastating,

to lose Alex Rodriguez, right on the heels

of Ken Griffey Jr., and only a few years after

they had to deal Randy Johnson away?

They'll make every effort to retain him.

At that point, I'm 24.

I've been there parts of seven years.

The breaking up of the team had already started

a little bit with Griffey heading out.

I didn't know how much longer Lou was going to be there.

So then it was a matter of, like, you know,

what would be the best decision for my family.

He has declined comment on the situation

all season long, which is probably the best approach.

Well, two things, though, Bobby.

He says that he wants to be on a winner.

And that's what Seattle is now.

And I think in my last at bat, I hit a home run.

And he drives one to deep left,

back near the wall, and gone.

Well, if that's the way he says goodbye,

he does it with some style.

It was bittersweet, because we had

a phenomenal year from start to finish,

and we were two wins away from going to the World Series.

A slow roller, but Martinez doesn't run well.

Jeter, up with it, starts spreading the news.

New York, New York.

We tried to get Alex to stay in Seattle.

We really did.

I've always said he wouldn't have gotten

in any trouble over there.

We would have watched over him, you know.

We'd have watched over him.

It's my pleasure to introduce to you the newest Texas Ranger,

the man who's going to build the foundation

to help us achieve our goal of winning the World Series.

So Alex Rodriguez.

We offered him, I think, 125 or 130 million.

And the agent said, "We don't need to talk anymore.

You'll see why tomorrow."

To his 50-odd player clients,

Scott Boras is a godsend.

But it seems that almost everyone else in baseball

think he's the worst thing to happen since the spitball.

Scott has a very unique style,

which is, a lot of times, is all or nothing.

Don't you know the oldest story in sport?

It's the greedy agent.

He was prepping me for this moment

for almost 10 years.

In 1998, I turned down $80 million from the Mariners.

In 1999, I turned down $130 million.

That, to me, was pressure.

I think Scott and I were thinking

maybe we'd get 150, 175.

I think that was the target.

And then the Texas Rangers blew me away.

When he said 252, I said, "Come again?"

$252 million.

In the year 2001, like, that's crazy.

At the time, the highest sports contract

was half that... Kevin Garnett

with the Minnesota Timberwolves.

So that just took my life to a whole different place.

Some good, some not so good.

Alex, there are a lot of fans of yours in Seattle

who heard you all through this process say,

"I'm looking for a winner.

I want to play for a winner,"

and that was your number one priority.

But then after signing this record deal you did,

it looks a little bit like you went to the highest bidder.

How do you respond to some of those...

That press conference, it was less of a celebration

and more of a lot of skepticism

and not necessarily, like, the happiest day.

Well, you're always going to have critics.

I mean, I've had good friends that have signed contracts

and they've been criticized for being lowballed.

And you're going to get critics for signing big contracts.

But to tell you the truth,

you know, I'm glad I didn't have to make a close call.

It was, like, such a whopper of a contract.

Like, it wasn't just a baseball story.

It was a national story.

I knew it was going to be big,

but I didn't realize the impact it would make in sports

and how much anger it brought to people.

Are we going to look back at this deal and say,

that's the deal that was the beginning

of the end for baseball?

I became that guy that represented

what's considered bad in sports or greed.

His ego is going to drive Texas into the ground.

Sold out.

I think that's what he did.

Alex Rodriguez makes his return to Safeco Field.

I'm going to boo him tonight because I hate the guy.

I was hoping he'd stay with us, obviously,

but I don't blame him.

You're a professional player.

Monopoly money falling

from the upper deck here.

Although, at that time,

he was making a lot more than most.

Swing and a miss, and down he goes.

And the crowd erupts at Safeco Field.

Hurtful at all because they were throwing

money and stuff like that?

They were throwing money?

It was fake money.

Oh, fake money.

You couldn't run away from it.

I would walk around the streets and they were

like, "Oh, that's the 252 guy."

That part made me feel very uncomfortable.

You know, I'm almost embarrassed

and ashamed of this contract.

That type of money at that age,

you know, people are going to look at you differently.

In my early days, I was the underdog.

I was the kid that couldn't afford nice spikes

and equipment and bats.

And then once you signed a big contract,

overnight, you wake up as Goliath.

High fly ball hit deep into right...

He left to go to Texas, and he was the man in Texas.

You're doing a TV show now, big dog?

Oh, that's a hit, baby.

Hey, make sure you look good for TV.

The rules had changed and the expectations had changed,

and that's part of the territory.

You can't be the highest paid player in the game

and not think that, you know, there's going to be

more eyeballs and more interest.

Well, there's one that's going to go out to left,

way back, and gone.

Felt really early on that the margin of error

had gotten really small.

Oh, my God.

A-Rod lifts it to center field.

Cameron, back, looking, gone again.

In Seattle, I was always, like,

the little brother with all these veterans around.

And here I was expected to be that big brother

and the leader.

Oh, baby, you got an entourage following you.

Oh, no.

Alex driving it, number 300.

You really don't know how much pressure

you have on yourself, really,

though, when you're making $252 million.

You and I will never know that kind of pressure.

Thank you.

I probably played my best baseball in Texas.

Individually, he was great.

The team was horrible.

A drive to right center field.

I played really well on the field,

but was having a hard time helping us win.

And I would just get crushed.

Actually, people are very friendly when they see me.

They just collectively are mean to me.

As I look back, I went to Texas

and kind of lost my way a little bit

and, kind of, A-Rod took over.