Baseball star, sometimes Madonna paramour and admitted steroid-user Álex Rodríguez is featured on the cover and in the pages of the new issue of Details magazine. In his coverstory interview, A-Rod talks about his “favorite” Madonna song, poses for a (IMHO) narcissistic photospread and the overall state of his sports career … just hours before Sports Illustrated breaks the news that A-Rod tested positive for using a “banned substance” after he publicly went on the record to adamantly deny that he’s ever used banned substances in his career. Meh. Timing is everything. Here are a few photos from A-Rod’s Details photoshoot and a portion of his coverstory interview:
The night before his life changes forever, Alex Rodriguez calls from Miami with an urgent request. A-Rod is worried about something he said during our interview last night. I’ve been hearing mysterious warnings all afternoon: Alex needs to talk. Alex wants to clarify something. Can’t say what. Alex will call you from his car. “Listen,” Rodriguez says. “I was thinking about one thing that I spoke about—it’s something that’s kind of trivial but will give me a hard time for no reason.” He pauses. “The song.” Aha. Last night, he let slip his favorite Madonna song. The curious relationship between A-Rod and the pop icon makes for delicious gossip, of course. Is Rodriguez terrified that Madonna will resent the tongue-wagging? Or, better still, has he picked the wrong song as his favorite, and fears that an offended Madge might march her stilettos over his back? No: Rodriguez believes that revealing the song would lead to its being played every time he stepped to the plate during an away game. “The last thing I want to do is go to every stadium and have them play that song,” he says. Fine—to be honest, it’s not even a great Madonna song (if it had been something juicy like “Justify My Love,” forget it). Looking back, his preoccupation seems surreal. Just the day before, Selena Roberts, a reporter from Sports Illustrated, had confronted Rodriguez at a Miami gym, asking for his reaction to evidence that he’d tested positive for illegal steroids in 2003. And now here he was, sweating a Madonna song. It’s like worrying about the in-flight movie as your plane is belly flopping on the Hudson River. Maybe Rodriguez is in denial. He’s just spent the afternoon happily posing for the cover shoot for this story, showing off his strapping physique and loosening up with shots of Patrón. His pals talk of continuing the party nearby, at the remodeled Fontainebleu hotel. When he calls later there’s no panic in his voice, no foreshadowing of the humiliation that he, at least, knows is coming. It really is as though his biggest concern in the world is that Madonna song. That fear is misdirected anyhow: Like an opposing team’s ballpark needs any inspiration to crank up a Madonna song when A-Rod comes to the plate. Velvet-vested organists have been practicing the entire Ciccone oeuvre for months. You know what happens next. Just over 12 hours after we hang up, Sports Illustrated publishes its story. Two days after that, a tearful Alex Rodriguez carefully confirms to ESPN that he used a “banned substance.” Excoriated in the media, the best baseball player of his generation is in an unimaginable fight to get his good name back. He’d probably give anything to return to worrying about that damn song. “Alex,” he says, extending a hand. “Nice to meet you.” Rodriguez strides toward my table in a sleek Italian restaurant in Miami’s South Beach wearing a cappuccino-colored sweater, a white oxford shirt, jeans, and pristine white sneakers. Style-wise, he’s a little Fred Rogers, a little Jerry Seinfeld. His eyes are turquoise green, and his brown hair is cut and gelled impeccably (the frosted tips were excised a while ago). On his left wrist is a red string Kabbalah bracelet. He orders an iced tea and explains why he was delayed on his way to dinner. One of his daughters was taken to the hospital with a staph infection. She’s going to be fine, he says, sounding relieved. Spring training is less than two weeks away, and Rodriguez has been working out down the road in Coral Gables, at the University of Miami, “about six mornings a week.” He’s pleased with the three new hires the Yankees spent $423 million on—first baseman Mark Teixera, pitchers C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett—and his face brightens as he talks about playing in the new $1.6 billion Yankee Stadium. He tells me he grabbed a souvenir seat from the old ballpark before it was shuttered. “What I really wanted I couldn’t get,” Rodriguez says. “There was a scale in the training room that had been there for years. Very cool, rustic, gold. Babe Ruth weighed himself on that scale. Joe DiMaggio. Mickey Mantle. I would have paid a funny number for that.” A waiter interrupts to ask for our dinner order, and Rodriguez waves him off—no food, thanks—as we discuss other off-season dramas. He mentions that he voted for Obama. “I’m cheering hard for him,” he says. “But we have to give him time and be patient.” (Three days later, the new president will call revelations of A-Rod’s steroid use “depressing news.”) Rodriguez, whose baseball salary alone is $28 million this season, admits he lost a chunk of change in the economic meltdown. “Whoever says they didn’t is lying,” he says, leaning forward in his chair. He says he feels bad for Michael Phelps, who’s recently been photographed lip-locked to a bong. “We live in a world right now where everyone’s keeping score,” Rodriguez says of the hunger for scandal. “And it doesn’t stop when the games end. . . . They’ve crossed over. And you have the Internet stuff, and all these phones. . . . It’s very intense.” Of course, A-Rod’s own version of the bong photo—a far more damaging one—is ready to drop. Earlier in the day, Rodriguez had his encounter with Roberts, the Sports Illustrated reporter, at the University of Miami gym. “You’ll have to talk to the union,” he told her when she confronted him about the positive drug test. “I’m not saying anything.” But he never mentions it to me. There are no urgent calls to or from his handlers, no interruptions at all. If he’s distracted, he isn’t showing it. He’s polite, unrushed, engaged. This is not to suggest he is loquacious; to say Alex Rodriguez is a guarded person is to say NORAD’s headquarters is a garage with a Master Lock. He examines each question for trapdoors before answering. You can’t fault him for protecting himself, but you can practically hear a P.R. team rattling off talking points inside his head. Responses are wiped clean of anything raw, off-message, or authentic.
The interview does go on from there and actually offers some bit of personality … he confesses that he sometimes will ride the subway to baseball games (“I have a hoodie on, but all it takes is one person and then you’re done. But it’s great. The fans get a kick out of it, I get a kick out of it. We talk about who’s pitching tonight, and what we need to do. It’s like being on sports radio”) and, of course, does talk a bit about Madonna … tho, he never quite offers anything that might be construed as scandalous (“We’re friends. She’s an amazing entertainer. And it’s been amazing how she’s been able to stay on top for three decades. I have a lot of respect for her”). He also throws in bits about his now ex-wife saying that he and Cynthia have a “wonderful relationship”. The whole thing ends with A-Rod’s press conference admitting his use of banned substances and kinda throws a bucket of cold water over the entire interview. It’s an interesting read, I think. After the jump, check out one more photo of A-Rod from his Details magazine photoshoot — it’s not to be missed, he is actually kissing his #1 fan …
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