Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2405: The Tragicomic A-Rod

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Warren Schaeffer staying on as Rockies manager, the Mets’ and Rangers’ Brandon Nimmo–Marcus Semien swap, and their memories, thoughts, and feelings concerning Alex Rodriguez, inspired by the new, three-part HBO docuseries Alex vs. A-Rod. Then (58:35) they talk to the co-directors/EPs of Alex vs. A-Rod, Gotham Chopra and […]

Hello about baseball I want to know about all the single team I want to know about Sadass Fancrafts and about Oh Oh Todi I'm a very modern fan

Reading up on all the analytics I want to know about baseball Presented by Patriots supporters of Hello and welcome to Episode 2405 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer,

joined by Meg Rally of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Well, there are no more managerial vacancies in the majors because the last one has been filled by its formerly interim occupant, Lauren Schaefer, liked his first taste of managing the Rocky so much that he's coming back for more. and now as the permanent manager to the extent that any manager is ever permanent.

But Warren Schaefer, who replaced Bud Black, staying on in the job. And you can't say that he didn't steer the Rockies in the right direction because he did, I guess, relatively speaking. But Black had them 7 and 33. That's a 175 winning percentage. And then under O' Warren, 36 and 86, 295, that's a pretty significant. improvement, which we probably can't credit entirely to Warren Schaefer. It's probably just regression, but progress moving in the right direction. Although, does this make you more or less optimistic, pessimistic about the direction of the Rockies, if either, given that usually

you hire a new pobo and the pobo gets to pick their own people, right? And so does this maybe indicate that de-pedesta, de Pobo, DiPobo, I can't get, there's so many Pobos and I can't keep them all straight, but will DiPobo be able to actually clean house if he wants to or make significant changes in the front office and actually put his stamp on the organization or will he just be a new figurehead who's sort of set up to fail? So who knows? For all I know, he loves Warren Schaefer and he signed off on this and this was his first choice, but it always raises an eyebrow. when you bring in a new bus, but yeah, keep the same manager. The way you said DiPobo made you sound like an erstwhile Bears fan, you know,

like you were trying to do a Chicago thing. I don't know that it changes my opinion all that materially. I think it underlines one of the issues we raised when talking about Deepedestus hiring, which is he just doesn't have a very firm footing in baseball as it is currently constituted, which, to be clear, doesn't mean that he can't adjust, that he won't. learn that a year from now he might not be in a better position to have sort of a preferred field manager of his own. But he is at least for the next little bit here, I would imagine largely going to have to rely on the existing infrastructure and processes of the Rockies.

And that might, in this case, include their manager because what does he know about like the next up-and-coming star at AA or whatever? Right. Like he's, you know, he's not going to know those guys now, to be fair to him, I don't know how thoroughly well-versed outside of their own organizations every pobo is, right? When you see a new pobo put in place and they bring their people with them, they're often their people, right? At least in some form, like we're seeing this in, we're seeing this with the nationals, right? There's like a lot of Red Sox DNA in that organization now, right? And so I don't know that the pool of potential candidates for that role would have been enormous if it had been another executive who were put in that seat.

But it probably, or maybe would have been better than, you know, the guy who's already in the dugout. Although I guess he's probably not in the dugout like right now because it's November and they're not playing baseball. Yeah, that would be eyewash if you were just sitting in the dugout all winter because you're so eager to get back in there. It would be eyewash. Yeah. I think it kind of leaves, it leaves things. in largely the same place that they were for me before, which is like, hey, that's sure a weird choice that they made over there. What's that about? You know? Yeah, I haven't seen a term reported. So it's not as if they necessarily signed him to a long-term contract. So we'll see. Maybe it's still sort of technically interim or provisional and they'll see if it turns out to be a good fit. They could always make another change. And I think it's probably useful to remember that whatever the term is, all manager contracts are provisional or interim in some way, shape, or form. Your assurance that you're going to get paid past the current season might be guaranteed, right, by a multi-year deal.

But as many people have pointed out, as we have gone through the manager carousel this year, you know, one of the more important functions a manager serves is being fired sometimes. So, you know, I would, I would suspect that if a year from now, Deepa Dessa looks around and it's like, I'm not satisfied with our current situation, but I really like that guy, that they'll just put that guy in, whoever it is. And, you know, they might give their existing group their walking papers and thank them for their service regardless of what the term is. Yeah. And that's the question. Will he have the latitude to do that? Will the Montforts give him free reign to remake that front office as he sees fit? or will he just be walking into the situation and he'll be nominally in charge but won't really have the freedom or the resources to actually reshape the organization and we'll just get more of the same.

And sometimes continuity can be good, you know, steady hand at the tiller and all that. And you're making changes and you're dismissing long-term executives and managers. And then you want at least a little continuity for the young guys coming up at the Racki's who just had an excess of continuity and maybe. undeserved continuity and longevity, so it does make you wonder. But I don't wish Warren ill or anything. That is an old-sounding name, as other people have pointed out, Warren Schaefer. He's a mere 40 years old. He's 40 years young.

My God. Yeah, and he's young in the job as well. And we made our jokes about Kevin Stefanski coming on and rejoining Paul D. Podesta, but he has not lost his job yet. He is still Brown's head coach, perhaps, and probably good for him. It's still adjusting to this world where you, like, know things about football. It's really. I can tell you all about Shador Sanders and his debut a quarterback, but I won't have another podcast. I could.

There's a lot of, I'm making a joke about the degree of certainty with which people are talking about Shador, which I find perplexing, Ben. I find it's sort of confounding. It's distracting how much he looks like his dad. It's really, every time they cut to the sideline, I'm like, it's like a jump scare. And I was aware of the resemblance, you know, before he put, but something about him being in an NFL uniform, even more than when he was at Colorado. It's just like, it's really doing something in my brain, Ben. I'm like, what's. Yeah.

The seed is strong, as they say in Westros. Do is that what they say in Westrose? Some say that. We won't dwell on that. You can hear me talk more about Shudor Sanders on Hang Up and Listen or not. What a sentence. that I have no certainty when it comes to the future in baseball or football. So I also have no certainty about who will win a trade that we have to talk about.

Yet another, one for one, swap of big leaguers and each one more intriguing than the last. So we talked about the Taylor Ward, Grayson Rodriguez deal. Now we have the Marcus Semyon for Brandon Nimmo deal, the Rangers and the Mets. hooking up on a real barn burner here. So this is really interesting and I don't even know how to sort it out and maybe it's too soon to sort it out because it does feel kind of preliminary. It feels like it's the first domino to fall maybe, at least for one of these teams. There's still positional log jams and it's unclear if freeing up money will be put towards something else or or freeing up a position for another free agent or who knows what.

But Marcus Semyon going from Texas to New York, Brendan Nimo going back the other way, along with $5 million to offset some of the difference in their remaining salaries. So Nimmo has more years left on his contract and so more total dollars due to him. But Semen has a shorter term remaining, but more dollars per year, higher A.A.V. So bigger competitive balance tax hit, how relevant that is to the New York Mets. I don't even know. But, yeah, so it's sort of like a mutual salary dump. It's not as if there's great salary relief for either team here, but there are fewer dollars now on the Mets ledger long term because NIMO is signed for longer and is younger, of course. but it's kind of a decline off, basically.

It's like who has declined more, who will decline more from here on out. And so Semyon has three seasons and 72 million remaining on the seven-year $175 million deal. He signed over the 2021 to 22 off-season, whereas Nimmo has 101 and a quarter million coming to him through 2030. So he's just three years into his eight-year, $162 million deal. And both of them were very valuable players prior to signing those contracts. But they have fallen off in the past couple of years, which is why this is happening. So it's just sort of do you extrapolate from here who will suffer the steeper descent. But it's really on both sides of the ball that there has been some decline.

So what do you make of this? I think that it increases my belief in the Mets potentially signing Kyle Tucker. So that's one thing. I think that Bowman put it really well in his piece about this trade for us. I think in a vacuum, absent the roster fit piece of this, which is obviously quite important to our assessment of the trade, but just in terms of like the Semen and the Nimo of it all, I like the Mets. side of it better just because I think I'm always going to prefer a still above average middle infielder to a corner guy. But I think when you think about their sort of all-in production over the overlapping parts of their contracts, it's probably going to end up being

pretty close to a wash betwixt in between them. The shape of that production might be different. you're maybe more concerned about Marcus Semyon's ability to produce at the plate like he went from being a 120 WRC plus hitter with like elite defense to being like

I think he had an 87 WRC plus this year or something like that in the high 80s but I think you're a lot more confident in him being defensively useful and I think that I mean like NIMA might just be a DH at this point you know I'm sure he can stand and left but like

it's alarming, you know, he certainly isn't a center fielder anymore. And I think that there's rapidly going to come a time where he's not even productive in the field at all, even in a corner. So in terms of the roster fit, I like this for New York a good bit more. They have weird or had going into the offseason sort of weird log jammy elements of their roster, both now and potentially in the future, where, you know, you have Soto still in the field, March, He's deaching, so Pete Alonzo can't. You have this weird infield configuration as a result of Alonso needing to be at first base. You know, what are you getting out of some of their other guys?

Jeff McNeil, who's now hurt, so he's sort of taking care of himself as an issue here. Yeah, he may be done as a met one way or another. Yeah, he might be done as a met. Even for position players, you don't want to hear thoracic outlet syndrome bandied about. And obviously, Marte has gone in free agency. Alonzo seemingly is also, although we'll see if they want. want to bring him back. But I think that, like, the idea of having Marcus Semyon and Francisco Lendor is your double

play combo, that sounds good. Like, that sounds pretty good to me. Now, he had a broken foot, which was the result of a, of a Hivai pitch, I think, not a, because he has, like, a degenerative bone. There's nothing wrong with his bird bones so far as, you know. But you just start to worry about a guy, you know, getting into his mid-30s and starting to have injuries, even if there. I think it was a foul maybe that broke his foot.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. So, like, you kind of have to fold some of that potential injury risk into his profile, maybe even a little more than you already were as, as, again, a guy in his mid-30s. But I like the fit there. I mostly think, and I think Petriello made a version of this point on Blue Sky for a deal involving two guys who have been all-stars and have been sort of key. engines to their respective teams have signed big free agent deals. It is sort of amazing how low of an impact from a baseball perspective this might end up having, at least relative to getting

those guys at their peak. But from a roster fit perspective, I like it better for the Mets. And, you know, I know there's been, I never know how seriously to take any of this so you can maybe tell me as a resident of New York and someone stewing in the soup of your tabloids and talk radio, but it also seemed like there were clubhouse fit issues with Nemo at times. I don't know how much that mattered or how real that was or how much of that was just, hey, we suck more than we thought we were going to. And so let's all fight. So, you know, I don't want to like make too much of that. But I will say, and Ben, I'm saying this, I'm saying this here within the safety of the podcast, huge face upgrade for New York. Boy. Boy. Boy. And, and,

Anyway, we can move on. But, yeah, like, a trade. And, like, if this combination of dudes moved, especially one for one, like three years ago, I would have been, like, disrupting somebody's Sunday. And this time around, I was like, Baumann, you can file in the morning. That's fine. Yeah. Right.

Yo, these were several win players at their peak. And now they're not at their peak. They're past their peak. But the question is, how far past and how much further past will they get? And Nimmo's younger, that's why he has fewer years or more years remaining on his deal. He's 32, Semion's 35, but Nimmo looks a lot older than he did. He has lost more than a step. What happened?

Well, I guess part of it was planter frisitis, and that always will make you slow down and look older. So I don't know if that's fully behind him. Sometimes that recurs. And I think he's still playable as a left-fielder, which is a pretty low bar defensively. Yeah, for now, if the decline continues, who knows, I think he's an upgrade over Adelaise Garcia, whom the Rangers non-tendered on Friday. So that created a spot for Nimo. It makes sense in the way that they both kind of needed players at these other positions, I guess, maybe more. although I don't know who's going to play second for the Rangers.

They have options, but, yeah, there's still a bit of a traffic jam for both teams, I guess, to some extent. But you figure that with Nimmo leaving that this frees up a position and maybe some cash for the Mets to, yes, make a run at Tucker maybe, or Bellinger, possibly. But I guess Nimmo has been a bit more productive than Semyon of laid and combined with. with the age and everything. I guess I'd rather have Nimmo if you just put the contracts aside, but the contracts have a huge bearing on why this deal was made. So by the end of the contracts, the respective deals, I don't know, that the Rangers will be getting a great return on investment for Nimmo.

It's just he's kind of morphed as a player. He used to be this great on-base guy. And now he's a decent on-base guy by the, low on base standards of this era, but he's kind of morphed into more of a power hitter, but not a truly great power hitter. But not an actual power hitter. Yeah. So, I don't know, there's been slippage for both of them, really.

And Simian was always kind of a tough guy to figure out because he'd have years where he was an MVP candidate and then years where he just kind of fell off. Like, okay, 2020 was weird for everyone, but he went from being like six plus wins. player in 2019 and 2021 to being a below average bet in 2020. And then same in 2022. He kind of had like an every other year thing going on where he was just kind of average-ish in 2022 as a hitter and then rebounded in 2023 when the Rangers won the World Series. And that makes you a legend for Rangers fans forever. So I think that Rangers fans are probably pretty happy with how that signing worked out just because you got your first title out of it and

flags fly forever and kind of who cares after that and he seems like you know good guy well liked and so you're sorry to see him go I guess but yeah given the offensive decline and then also he's still a good second baseman but maybe not an elite second baseman the way that he was still you pair him with Lindor who's maybe not quite as elite a shortstop as he was but still good that's a pretty pretty darn solid double play combo so you just hope his bat either rebounds or at least he arrests the decline for the next year or two and can sort of stay within shouting distance of average and then he'll be still playable and startable. But who really knows?

They both do have track records for being durable, and Nimmo still has an active streak of 150-plus games for the past four seasons, whereas Semyon got under that this past year, again, for not something you'd think of as an age. related injury, really, just a contact injury that hopefully won't be repeated. Yeah, it's not like he had like a bunch of soft tissue problems or anything this year. Yeah, but he was like a Ironman, you know, playing 162 games multiple times. So they both, in theory, give you durability. And I guess it's more of a question of like, do you want them to be available now because are they going to be helping you or dragging you down?

So it does feel kind of like incomplete because he could. kind of have to see what happens next and did they use this money that the rangers and just cut a bunch of money from their books because of the non-tenders and so will they put that towards something or is this a bit of a step back of rebuild or retrenchment whatever term you want to use for them and then for the Mets you figure they're always going to be in spending modes so sort of reserving judgment but I guess I can see it I understand it from both sides, which is usually the case with most major league trades. So these teams are usually operating at least somewhere in the neighborhood of

rationality, and you can see what their motivations were and how it improves each team. And I can sort of see it here. But, yeah, it's kind of tough to figure this one out because I don't really know what you're getting from these players at this point. Yeah, I think that incomplete is a good way to put it. And honestly, like, again, Yeah, and I think that anyone who's asserting that there's a tremendous amount of daylight between these guys is overselling it a little bit. And we'll just have to see, like, what they, what can they do with themselves?

And I think we don't, we don't quite know yet. So. I think I'd rather have Nimmo as a player in 2026, but I'd probably rather have, but I'd probably rather have Semyon's contract situations, combination of player and contract. I would much rather have, I would much rather have Marcus Semyon than Brandon Nimo. 426 only. Yeah, I think I would. I think maybe much is too strong. I would rather, I would rather have.

I don't know that I would much rather have, but I would rather have. Yeah, that's fair. I guess the projections probably favor your side of things and Semyon. So I just, I don't know. Yeah, it's not a big difference. I guess I lean toward Nimmo just. because of the age mostly, but he's looking older than he is.

So I don't know that the actual age is all that telling. So sort of a weird one. It's sort of tough to pin down these players' talent and then also just what this will mean for each roster. And the Mets, yeah, it's just crowded because they have a bunch of younger infielders. Like they have Jet Williams and they have like Ronnie Maricio and all these younger infield guys

and not really places to play them really, obviously. And just like all the guys that they've brought up and tried to establish in the past few years are still floating around there. But it will help their defense. And that's been an area of need, an area of weakness for them. And David Stearns has been pretty clear

about wanting to shore that up. And Semyon, even in his mid-30s, somewhat diminished, should help in that area. So, yeah. I can see that side of it, too. Anyway, we'll revisit this maybe at the end of the offseason and see how these rosters actually stack up when we're doing the team preview series.

If we do that again, I assume we will. We haven't discussed it. Yeah, we should both do the team preview series and also revisit this trade in particular if for no other reason than the odds that I remember it go way up if we talk about it again in the preview series. Yeah, yeah. Well, nice for a major move to have happened at least a few days before Thanksgiving.

It doesn't preclude more transaction activity when you are sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner. But at least they got this one out of the way before the actual holiday. I just want to put this out there to all the executives in baseball. I don't imagine a lot of them listen to our show, but if they did, I want you to know that my patience for holiday transactions has officially declined to zero. And I'm just going to start asserting, granted, with no evidence that you hate your families and they hate you back. And that's the reason you're transacting on Thanksgiving. It's because of the familial tension that you simply must escape. And the only way for you to earn release from that sweet, difficult, sticky tension over the Thanksgiving table is to transact. And you

should see someone about that and not make it my problem yeah i wonder if the rangers will trade for or sign a second baseman or whether they'll be content with their internal with josh smith yeah josh smith or ezekiel duran or i guess spasian walcott top prospect is floating around and yeah but he's not close eager is still at short then i don't know if you want to move him or yeah how long it'll take him so so they do have a vacancy there even if it makes sense that Nemo slides into the vacancy that Garcia's non-tender created and then you have

Wyatt Langford maybe playing right and Evan Carter's in the mix and everything but yeah it's one of those trades where it's like it creates more questions

than it answers really like we don't even know who's going to play where on these teams let alone what moves will follow it is interesting a lot of the transactions that we've gotten

so far this off season have inspired us to go huh You know, there's been a lot of, really? Okay. Okay. And I don't know if that's always where you want to be as a general manager or a po-bo or po-bo, for that matter. It's not a bad place to be as a podcaster, though, because it means we have more to talk about. Well, and it's nice that you and I disagreed a little bit. We never do that. A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, we're going to devote the rest of this episode to an HBO docu-series. We teased this last week, but there's a series on HBO called Alex versus A-Rod.

As you might infer from that, it's about Alex Rodriguez, and it's a three-part docu-series, all about A-Rodd, specifically his baseball career and his PD transgressions and his personal foibles. And we will be talking to the directors and executive producers of this docu-series in just a little while. Gotham Shopra and Eric Ledrew will join us, and we will pepper them with some questions. But what did you think? We can banter a bit about the series before we bring them on. Sure. I was entertained. I was pretty engrossed.

I mean, I was sold by the pitch, first of all, because I just find all things A-Rod confounding and fascinating, even more so than a nimmo for Semy and trade. So I don't know what to make of A-Rod either. I've been trying to figure him out a lot longer than I have this trade. And this tries to get to the bottom of who he is and why he did all the things that he did. And we at least get the current version of his story of why he used PEDs. And it's really an up and down story. I think Mike Francesa, who's one of the talking heads in this docu-series, calls him a Shakespearean figure no fewer than three times. Yes. I get what he's going for there because, man, what an incredible baseball talent and not even just pure talent. Like, he made good on his talent. It's so odd that you look at someone who's an inner circle, one of the greatest of all time players and still look at him as sort of this could have been, should have been squandered what the story of his career should be because he was that great.

and yet seems like he could have been maybe even greater or at least a lot less just embarrassing and disgraced. And for that, I am still sort of sad. I went into this with very low expectations, in part because a lot of – we've had a lot of athlete docs lately, many of which have sort of a similar setup in terms of the participation of the subject being central to the dock. And I have generally found them to be underwhelming in terms of how revelatory they've been, how antagonistic the filmmakers have been willing to be with their subject. And particularly for guys who's, and a lot of these are about male athletes, although not exclusively, whose careers have sort of unfolded in our lifetime where we have a contemporaneous understanding of them as public figures, as, as competitors, et cetera,

they often have left me being like, well, but what about that thing, right? Like, I remember details of their career that I consider to be pretty foundational to our understanding of them that sometimes are left out entirely. And so I was a little unsure what to expect of this.

And I was very pleasantly surprised by the degree of candor that they were able to get out of A-Rod and sort of the seeming spirit of transparency that he brought to the documentary himself. And I think that the folks who they got as talking heads were often striking this balance between an honest reckoning of A-Rod and his behavior, sometimes what that behavior cost them personally.

His X-Y-Sinthia features very prominently in the doc, she, she sure has his number. Yeah. And was quite uncompromising in her assessment of him, but it wasn't on, it wasn't mean-spirited, right? Like, there's still, I think, care and warmth demonstrated in a way that doesn't make you feel like he was let off easy, but where you feel like the people who are talking about A-Rod have a pretty holistic understanding. of him, both his virtues and his vices. So I thought that that was pretty effective. I think it's a fascinating character study because, and we talk about this, spoiler,

we've already recorded the interview. We talk about this a bit in our interview, but, you know, he is making this decision to lead a public life still, right? To subject himself to scrutiny and perception from other people, which is an endeavor that has not always served him well, you know, both in terms of it not being flattering, but also in terms of it seeming like it's been pretty damaging to him, right, to not being healthy for his psyche and psychology. And so for him to be not only participating in this documentary, but also, you know, being a sportscaster and being this public-facing business

person and having famous paramours and what have you is just, it's very interesting. You know, I came away feeling like I had a better understanding of him, but also feeling like the amount of understanding that anyone can have of a rod is capped by how, where he is in his own journey of understanding himself, because you watch this and you're like, well, this is a, and I don't say this to excuse any of the behavior. Like, this is not a, oftentimes not a flattering portrait of Alex Rodriguez, but. Yeah. But he is clearly trying to understand himself and, like, construct a core self, right? Not to psychoanalyze him, although we spent parts of our interview doing that. Like, this, this strikes me as like a wounded person who never really developed as a complete person, you know? And so some of his project as both a public figure and a human being is like, well, who is, who is, who are you? You know, who are you? Who do you understand yourself to be? You know, not when you're on camera, but just, like, sitting at home, you know. So I enjoyed it. Also, three parts. Beautiful. You know?

These, like, 10-part docs, get, no, you don't need, stop it, stop it. Yeah, well, as I'll say later, I would have watched more just because I'm not interested in A-Rod. But, no, I think for most people, if you're on board with the idea of an A-Rodd docuseries to start with, and maybe more than three hour-ish-long episodes is probably pushing it. So I get it. And they do generally stick to the baseball and the personal as it affects the baseball. But we'll get into what they do omit. And importantly, this is not one of the docs where the athlete themselves is producing it and having final cut over of everything.

We'll talk about the genesis of it. But obviously, yes, when it's kind of constructed around. the subject's participation. There's some inevitable degree of being compromised there because there's only so much you can say without having that person decides, actually, I don't want to be a part of this. And then suddenly you're left with nothing. But it isn't as if he was the one calling the shots on this documentary, which has been the case for some other documentaries, which can be revealing in its own way, but also tends to obscure certain things. So, yeah, this is a little more truthful. And yeah, there's the hallmark of post-last-dance docu-series, lots of like watching footage

of himself on a screen or an iPad and reacting to it in real time and that kind of thing. But, but yeah, it seemed like he was up for the exercise and willing to come clean about things with the caveat that he has no credibility, really, because he has lied to us all on multiple occasions in the past. And for all we know, could still be doing so. But it- It seems as if he wants to make amends. And I'd say if you're a scholar of A-Rod, a student of A-Rod, then there's probably not a ton of new ground and new revelations here. But it is a good career retrospective, and he does walk you through all these moments. So it's not like super, oh, wow, I can't, I never heard this before.

Oh, I can't believe he finally admitted this, sir. But he does seem candid or as candid as he can be. So lots of the weird meming of A-Rod, like his whole social media presence, his like trying to write a book and he just has a blank piece of paper on his legs that just says book underlined at the top. Like, I've always just been drawn to A-Rod because I just, I find him to be a sympathetic figure even though he shouldn't be on paper because he's like a serial cheater. And I mean that competitively speaking and also in his relationship. with his wife. Now, there's a little less of an edge to him than there is with other great athletes, like Kobe comes up at the end of the interview.

Arod, as far as we know, doesn't have Kobe-esque marks on his record. Okay, like, you know, he cheated on the field. He was unfaithful in his relationship. Could be worse, I guess, and it is worse for a lot of other prominent athletes. So it seems like he's not harmless exactly, but, you know, You know, there could be worse personal transgressions. He did baseball crimes and he was not a good husband, but as far as we know, you know, he's not engaged in, you know, intimate partner violence or sexual assault, right? Like, it's not, it doesn't have that going for it.

I mean, it's interesting to contrast him with someone like, well, someone like Pete Rose, who's another recipient of sort of a big baseball doc. On HBO, where, you know, you think about, I don't want to downplay what A-Rod did because I think that, like, he did damage, certainly to his own career and legacy, but he did damage to the sport. That's a real thing. I don't think that he committed, like, capital baseball crimes, whereas Rose did, you know? Like, I'm not that we have disagreed on this, but, like, the notion that we're going to have to have Hall of Fame discourse about that guy is, like, Bananas. Give me Bonds and Clemens on every committee ballot for the rest of time rather than have to deal with the weirdos who come out of the woodwork on that. I sound very cranky on this pod today, and I don't mean to because I'm having a nice time talking to you, Ben. I love talking to, you know. Just bottle it up until we talk Hall of Fame on our next episode. Stay tuned. But anyway, like, there's certainly meaningful daylight between, like, the stakes of their transgressions, both baseball and non.

And I think that it gives him, not in a way that I necessarily mean as slippery, but it gives a rod room to maneuver, right? Because you can admit, even though, you know, talking about how you were approached and then decided to do steroids, you know, talking about like, no, I'm not going to do HGH and then being like, well, maybe I will. And I knew I was violating a baseball rule and you're like, yeah, dude, yes, you were. But because, it's not betting, I think, and because it's so well documented already, I think it gave him room to have candor about it in a way that I think he would have been, you know, much cagier about even still maybe for other kinds of transgressions.

Yeah, and it's the cheating and the steroid stuff that will keep him out of the Hall of Fame, understandably, but I think for me, the severity is almost flipped when we talk about Bonds or Clemens or other figures like this who are kept out of the hall because of PD stuff, but then it's like the more reprehensible personal stuff. It bothers me more than the competitive stuff. And ARA doesn't have that so much. It's not like, yeah, personal violence or anything. It seems like he's a flawed person, certainly, and has made many ill-advised decisions.

Oh, yeah. But those decisions have mostly harmed himself. Himself primarily, yeah. more than others, yeah, and he does seem to be like a loving, caring dad as far as you can actually tell that without being in the family. So, yeah, I've always just found him sort of sympathetic and relatable and human in a way that his talent would seemingly make him less relatable because he's just so incredibly gifted and yet his just personal failings and his just desire to be loved and his inability to be loved and to ingratiate himself, but

his just Sisyphian quest to keep doing it. There's something about that that he's just, he seems more vulnerable than many athletes do publicly. Like a lot of great athletes are weird in some way and maybe the same way and they're just so single-minded and devoted and committed in addition to being gifted. And A-Rod is, I mean, number one on the list. Like, it does make me like him more that he just loves baseball so much because I love baseball and but he was baseball too much i think it's he does love baseball too much i think yeah because

that was just all he did and was just fixated on 24-7 and that's a big part of the reason why he was so good but yeah just seemed to not develop any perspective or wisdom or other interests or anything and so he was just so single-minded and obsessed in his pursuit that i think it backfired because baseball was his whole world and it really led him astray. But I just always felt like I was kind of an A-Rod defender in my youth before all the PD stuff came out. And we each had the experience of rooting for Alex Rodriguez for the teams that we rooted for because you were Mariners fan and I was a Yankees fan and he was a Mariner and a Yankee. And he just, he blew me away. When he got to New York, I had never seen anyone who was that good at baseball.

because, and I know I led a charmed life as a fan as a kid watching a dynasty, but those teams never had anyone who was as good as A-Rod. I mean, they were incredible teams, and I don't want to downplay that or anything. Sure. They didn't have MVPs, really. Like the best individual season that I saw before A-Rod arrived in the Bronx was Derek Jeter in 99, and he maybe could have or should have won an MVP. if you weren't going to give it to Pedro.

And I think he finished six or something that year. He's probably slighted. He was better than that. But still, like a seven-win player is different from a nine or ten-win player because that's a level that, you know, like Marcus Semyon could get to a seven-win season. Maybe, you know, maybe he's not consistently living there. But you could, not that it was a fluke that Jeter got there, he's a great player in a Hall of Fame or two, but other mere mortals can have.

have a peak like that, but it's fairly rare for a non-Hall of Fame level and like inner circle guy to have a like 10 win season. And obviously Griffey had seasons like that in Seattle too, but I can only imagine when Arod showed up and, you know, you were quite young at that point, but to see him excel as young as he was. And then, yeah, having seen Jeter and Williams and all the greats and everything, and especially during. the like core dynasty years before the Yankees started really getting older and importing free agents and like Jason Giambi had a monster season in 2002 or like Mike Messina came over and was really good but for the most part it was the homegrown guys and they were really good

but not at that level because so few people have ever been at that level and and when the Yankees would go and get an outside guy often they would be kind of over the hill like you'd go and get Randy Johnson or Kevin Brown and they'd be kind of like at the end of their rope or like Tim Raines or someone who's like 40 and in a part-time player but to go get Arod when he's in his prime and to see what he did and hitting 50 plus homers

that just blew my mind like I in my life as a fan I never watched anyone day in and day out who had that kind of all around talent it was just amazing to witness And I remember defending him when I was a kid because there was one kid in my grammar school class for years, and we would have the A-Rod versus Jeter debate. And everyone would have that back then. You know, maybe you'd throw Nomar in there. And I was a Yankees fan, but I was always solidly in the A-Rod camp because he was just so much better than Jeter.

And the other kid would basically say, count the rings. And I would count the rings. I was happy to count the rings. Right. My team's rings too, but I felt very much like, yeah, I'd trade Jeter for A-Rod. And the case for Jeter was all based on intangibles and clubhouse chemistry and leadership and everything. And there is a case for that based on how Jeter just seemed to have his head screwed on better than A-Rod, certainly. And so his legacy is a lot less checkered than A-Rod's is, but just purely on talent and not just talent, but actualized performance.

Arod was just in another stratosphere at his best. He was incredible. And that's why it feels to me, I mean, he's like 13th all time among position players in war. And that feels like, oh, he was better than that because he was like top five through his early to mid-30s at least. And then, you know, he slowed down and he missed the year with the suspension. Plus, he moved when Jeter wouldn't move. Jeter was not a good shortstop. A-Rod was a good shortstop.

And Arod was the one who moved to third base and did that somewhat selflessly to try to win a ring, which he did ultimately. And if you put the shortstop positional adjustment on Arod's numbers for those years, yeah, maybe he's even better. And you take away the suspension. And he was the youngest to 500 homers. He was the youngest to 600 homers. It really felt like he was going to set that record. And then things kind of came crashing down, just on more than that. than one level. But yeah, I will always remember just being amazed by watching Arod up close.

I mean, he's one of the best baseball players I've ever seen. You know, I think that this has always been part of the tragedy for him, right? This is what Francesa means when he talks about him as a Shakespearean figure. Like, it just, you can't imagine any sort of alteration being necessary for him to just ride off into the eventual sunset as one of the best players of his generation. Yeah. And so it feels so, there is something about it that feels so tragic because the combination of his actual talent and the expectations that that brought with the pressure of the contract,

it just was too much for him to confidently bear, it seems. I think that he's a stone-cold weirdo, and not like in a dangerous way. I'm not alone in this opinion, but like he's a weird dude. You know, he is self-aware, seemingly. You're right to say that, like, this guy has lied to us before, and so we must leave open the possibility that intentionally or not there is artifice here. But he seems pretty sincere, and I think that there are moments. in the doc where you see vulnerability that, put it this way,

I don't think he's a good enough actor to pull off. I think part of why I came away feeling like I had a better understanding of him was that one of the weird things about the times that A-Rot has lied publicly is that there wasn't, it was obvious a lot of the time, right? There didn't seem to be a lot of sophistication there in terms of his ability to successfully manipulate other people. people, that Francesa interview, he is out of control and none of it is convincing, right? You're sitting there and you're like, you're excuse me, I swear, but I'm like, you're full of

shit. Like, you're so obviously full of shit. This is where he was fighting the suspension and he was launching lawsuits against the union and MLB and everyone else and maintaining that he never took anything from biogenesis, he is being railroaded. Yeah. It's just, yeah. And so maybe I'm getting got a little bit just because when he has tried to be slick like that, it has seemed really obvious.

It's also an interesting dynamic, right? Because we know what Arod did. We don't, we, I think we learned some new information about the ins and outs of it. But like, we, we largely know what ARA did. He couldn't go into this documentary and have it be worth anything to him and say, well, no, I didn't do that. I think that his incentives, strangely, aligned very well with the truth because presenting a flattering portrait of himself in this doc would have made people like him less. You know, he's incentivized to reveal the points in his life where he's been an ass-a-old, where he's been duplicitous, where he's cheated. And so it's just like an interesting filmmaking dynamic to navigate. but I thought that it was well done.

I did come away having sympathy for him. You know, I did appreciate the seemingly sincere, like, attempts to be accountable for his past behavior. And he was an interesting figure for me as a fan because he signed that deal with Texas when I was a lot younger. I wasn't thinking about the game in terms of labor dynamics. And so, like, I hated A-Rod when he left Seattle. I thought he was greedy, you know, and I wouldn't, there's no, I really don't think that I would ever interpret an athlete getting paid free agency that way anymore, right?

Like part of my, I think that in the last 10, 15 years, like, I have really been like, okay, what part of his quote unquote villainry was actually villainous? And some of it was, right? Like that I don't mean to say that like this guy is a saint or anything like that. but like signing a max contract okay you're the you're the best player of baseball yeah yeah why did the mirrors give you that deal you know like have you been wildly egotistical at times have you made at the a rod show did you try to grandstand during a literal world series game yeah you sure did do that yeah he does kind of throw scott boris under the bus he's just like he does he does throw boris under the bus and i'm like you know what i believe that like 50% of this is true

That was one spot where I was like, all right, Erod. Boris is not in the dock, but yeah, Erud kind of blames him for the timing of that announcement of the pre-agent departure. Yeah. Yeah, and, you know, there was, he's helping all of his union brethren in a way by signing the biggest deal that he could. And in fact, he then, when he was provisionally traded to the Red Sox, tried to renegotiate that deal in a way that would have reduced its value. And the union said, no, because we don't want to set that. precedent, understandably. But yes, I think he would be villainized a little less for that these days. But it's so strange because I keep saying I feel sorry for him and I do. And it's like,

he's got a lot going for him. You know, it's just, it's so weird to feel sympathy for someone who had so many gifts in so many ways. And even though he self-sabotaged so many times, he still got it pretty good on the whole. He seems to have a pretty loving family and he's got all the money in the world. And yeah, his reputation, his legacy is forever tainted and all. But in the grand scheme of things, he's doing pretty well for himself. But I just, he never seemed content. He never seemed like he could really enjoy that or he just kept trying to fritter it away. And when he struggled in the postseason in his early years with the Yankees, I felt bad for him then, too, because I just felt like, give him enough cracks at it. And he'll

eventually hit because he's too good not to. And then in 2009, of course he did and it's just he just made so many dumb decisions at least in the story as presented in the docu-series he could have just so easily avoided mistakes like that like announcing that deal in the middle of the world series or the second time he takes pedees when the first time was pre-testing and it was you know pretty much behind him and people would have forgiven it and he had the playoff redemption and World Series hero and all the rest and he could have just sailed off into the sunset. He could have just played out the rest of his career and it would have been okay. And then just to get back on the field as he presents it, he takes some HGH and who knows if it even helps him.

And it's just part of that, I guess, insecurity, that feeling that the expectations were so high that he had to justify the contract or he wants to be loved at all times or the ego of just, not being able to live with not being a great player while he was dealing with those injuries. And we've heard that from a lot of people who took PEDs. Oh, I just did it to get back on the field. And who knows whether that's always true or not. I will say, and I'll never know for sure. But I just don't really believe that the PEDs helped him all that much. And there's no way to know for sure.

But it's just you could look at the multiple times that he took them. And you could say, oh, he was just a product of PEDs. He wouldn't have been as good as he was without them. And it's possible. But I just look at, there's footage of him in high school. Oh, yeah. I mean, he just, he looks like A-Rod's. He was amazing.

It's not even like. It was such a special thing. Yeah. And it's, it's not like some of the other guys who really bulked up. I mean, yeah, his frame filled out a bit, as you would expect someone to, going from 18 to 30 or whatever. Right, yeah. It's not like he looked. dramatically different. And again, who knows, I'm just speculating entirely. But I can believe that

some other guys, even if they were Hall of Fame talents like Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds, I can readily believe that they were helped by those substances because they lasted a lot longer or Barry Bonds defies the aging curve and just ascends to a higher plane of performance and all of that. And I can believe that there is a tie to what he was taking with Arod. It's just It's hard for me to say because unless you think he was always juicing, you know, even as an amateur, and there was never a time when he was clean. If you believe that he was clean at that point, he basically just looks the same, like the same golden god of baseball, basically. Just the archetypical frame of just the athlete who's strong and rangy and gifted in every possible way. And he was just so good, so young.

And it's just, it's hard for me to think that if we could somehow subtract the PEDs that his stats would look that much worse, I don't know for sure. But for me, that's why it just, it taints his legacy a little less from a performance standpoint than from some other guys where I have more questions about that. And that just makes it all the more frustrating because it's like, you didn't have to do this. You were so good. You were the last person who needed to do this. And it's so easy, I guess, to feel bad for a guy who signed a $250 million contract. Like, who else would you feel bad for having enriched themselves like that? But the backlash to it and just how ill-prepared he was for that to happen.

Yeah, I'll just always feel like could have been in much less complicated existence. We could have looked back on A-Rod as just maybe the best of all time. and just sailed right into Cooperstown, and he just could not let that happen. No, he couldn't. It's, um, it'll always be tragic. It'll always be a little weird because he's just so strange. She just seems like such an odd guy.

You know, like, again, better clearly self-awareness still, uh, the feel comes and goes. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, yeah. And so it's just a weird, it's just a weird, uh, thing. And, like, he's going to be around for a while. Like, he clearly is comfortable, despite it seeming to me, like, something that would inspire a great amount of tension for him, like, being a public guy. And so we're hardly done with Arod's story. But, yeah, he's, you know, it's worth, it's worth checking out.

And, again, can't emphasize this enough. Three episodes. They're an hour each. You know, this is not like some of these thoughts, Ben. I'm like, do the streaming services really need that much content? That was not the case here. I thought it was well produced and edited and, like, good choices were made. We were not in a way that was obscuring chapters of his life, but, like, they assumed that we knew some things about him and could fill in where they were in the story without being, like, too didactic about it.

I thought they did a good job. Yeah. And the other thing is that he hasn't really been made to suffer long-term consequences, even in the sports world. You could say, be one thing if, okay, he's rich and he has daughters who love him, but he's basically persona non grata. He's unwelcome in baseball circles. That's not even the case now. He's on TV all the time. He's winning Emmys as a baseball broadcaster.

Liked him better early in his baseball broadcasting career more so than now. But he's on TV, he's paling around with Jeter and Ortiz and Robbins and Robbins. Sanford, even from time to time. So he's still welcome in baseball circles and now in ownership circles in sports also outside of baseball. So it's not as if his ambitions have been thwarted really in any area other than perhaps not being loved the way that he wanted to be loved and not being welcomed into Cooperstown. So I get it if you're saying, cry me a river. I've had enough A-Rod in my life. That's totally understandable.

Yeah. Your mileage might vary. I guess the place where I felt bad for him, you know, he suffered consequences for mistakes he made with full knowledge of them being mistakes. And that seems right to me. Yeah. And it does seem like he's gotten to a more peaceful place with himself. But like, I don't know, man, you've got to sit with yourself in that big house at the end

of the day. You just have to do that every day for the rest of your life. And I think that, you know, there have been times when that's been a harder proposition for him, then it seems like where he is now. So it's a, you know, that's a thing. It's a real thing. Okay. Well, worth watching and hopefully worth listening to our second segment.

We'll be back in just a moment with the directors of Alex versus Arod to hear how the docu-series sausage was made. Why rich and powerful people cheat part one. There's an arrogance that often comes. with power. There's a sense I won't get caught because you actually think you are better than other people. There's nothing more stupid than that. I'll end up the hard way. I'm in a journey of being a man with integrity and character and someone that you can bet on and you can trust. All right, well, we are joined now by the co-directors and executive producers of Alex versus A-Rod.

Gotham Shopra and Eric Lidrew, I will greet you guys separately so that people can distinguish your voices. Gotham, hello. Hey, nice to be here. Thanks for having us. And Eric, welcome. Hey, thanks, Ben. Thanks for having us. So, Gotham, maybe you could walk us through the genesis of this docu series.

Who approached whom and what were the conditions or ground rules, if any, on your end or Alex's end? You know, it goes back almost, gosh, like three years now, I think. I was introduced to Alex by his manager, a guy named John Rosen, who we had worked with for many years. And I think through the years, Alex had considered doing a documentary, but hadn't fully committed to it, hadn't found the right, you know, creative partners. So we had a breakfast here in Los Angeles. I will confess, you know, just to, and I think it's, you know, good for my objectivity. I hated Alex Rodriguez, I'm a hard Red Sox fan. I'm joking, but not totally.

Like, you know, it's like a lot of people just like, I don't know, cheater and all these other sort of I brought to the table. But, you know, I will say right from that breakfast, I was like, oh, that's so interesting. That's not what I would have thought. And we can talk more about that, like, why? But, you know, he was pretty candid in that breakfast. And I came back, and Eric and I have been collaborated for a long time. And I told him, like, oh, this could be, like, really interesting.

And this guy's really complicated and not what I expected and all this stuff. And I think subsequently, we had, we went down to Miami and met with Alex and his family, actually, some of his daughters. And I'd say, I mean, like, the genesis, but the ground rules were, hey, like, we're going to do this. And I think Eric came up with this. It's not necessarily going to be your life story. it's going to be a story about the thing that matters most, at least on the baseball field. Are you going to be accountable? Are you going to be honest about your transgressions of PEDs?

Those were the ground goals. That's the thing. It's not only, well, we're going to eventually have to talk about this. It's like, no, no, that's what this is about. He agreed. Now, to do that, you have to sort of get into his backstory and all of that sort of stuff. But, like, that was it. And then over time, you know, and it takes time.

That's why we're talking three years later now. But, you know, I'd say that was like really the kernel from which we started. You know, watching the documentary, I think one of the through lines is his evolution, not only as a public figure, but as a person, you mentioned that there have been other times when he was maybe approached about doing this sort of documentary. What about this moment, or three years ago, rather, made it the right time for him. to have this sort of candor and transparency. I think it's been, you know, 10 years since his suspension, more or less. And so I think there was just kind of like a sort of numerological aspect in that regard. And then I think, you know, I think Alex was seen his peers, you know, sort of be feted, celebrated.

Some of them get into the Hall of Fame. I don't want to speak too much on his behalf here, but I think I can say with, you know, a degree of confidence that, knowing that he had sort of dug his own grave, so to speak, and that he had no one to blame but himself. On the other hand, like a desire to kind of like share his story and how he sort of like learned to reckon with that. And I think those feelings kind of became refreshed that maybe he thought had been washed away, you know, with retirement, with the therapy that obviously we get into in the third episode of the film. And we're kind of like coming back a little bit. And it was almost like doing therapy all over again, I think, for him. You know, in many

respects, and that was partly by design, but also partly by just the nature of the material that we had to talk about. I'll add one other element, and only because he's talked about it publicly, so I feel like it's accurate. And it's sort of part of the film is like he has two daughters, both of whom were really coming of ages, young women, young adults, you know, one at the time again, it's taken some time. But like one was about to graduate as now a sophomore in college, and the other one, I think, is in her senior year in high school. And I think he's really close to them. And I think he felt one desire to share his story.

Because he talks a lot about, like, it's not like a lot of this hadn't been covered, but not by him. Like, he had never really spoken about it and owned his story. And so part of it was for the world, but part of it was for them. Like, and he wanted to come clean and be an example, you know, in some ways to them. So I think that was really part of the timing. Yeah, I guess cynically you could say, oh, it's PR, it's image rehab. He's a big NBA executive now, you know, wants to show that he's turned over a new leaf.

But maybe he actually has. It certainly seems as if he believes he has or he's making a convincing case. And I guess that's the central dynamic and maybe why you went with the title that you did. And in episode three, you have him talking about how being a different person on camera and off camera can be so exhausting. But of course, he's saying that on camera, which just reminds us of the whole meta aspect of this. Going back to the first question and answer in episode one, when you say, are we talking to Alex or to A-Rod? And that's really the mystery that runs through all of this. So did you both think that you were always talking to Alex? Were there moments where he lapses

into A-Rod and you have to just prod him back onto course? Or did you feel like you were getting the unvarnished sincere self? 100% the latter, for my point of view. No, it's still there. He definitely slides into A-Rod territory occasionally. And you know, that's not all just like, oh, he's not telling

the truth. It's like there's a bravado, there's a persona. I think Alex is still very drawn to present, like a lot of people who live under the, in the sort of public square, is drawn to here's this version that

I want the world to see in that world. That version has a lot of bravado, has a lot of confidence. I mean, he has been obviously hugely successful on the field, but he's also been hugely successful off the field. And some of the things you mentioned with the Timberwolves and other stuff. So I think you regularly, and it was almost became a joke, like, okay, this is A-Rod, let's pull back in. Sometimes it's like, let's do it again tomorrow, like, because, you know, and, but he was,

he got that. And I think Eric really drew, how did the therapy work? Like, what was that like? Okay, because that seems to really get to the heart of Alex. Well, let's replicate that. You know, let's put you in a room and you don't get to leave for hours on end and take meal breaks. And we'll eliminate the opportunity to slip back into Aero territory. But we definitely felt that.

I mean, it's, again, one of the reasons to stick forever is because it takes time to be able to really communicate with that. Alex. Yeah, and this is a guy who's famously, infamously lied on camera repeatedly, right? And so you don't want to be the new Mike Francesa or Katie Couric who's, you know, having him on your platform to tell untruths. So I'm sure it was important to make sure that you weren't getting got the same way. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, part of the Alex's like high degree of self-awareness or sort of like at times presentationally concerned, you know, let's say, is that you know, vulnerability, integrity, honesty. Like, these things are actually, like, buzzwords in the nightguise culture right now.

And so you can kind of, like, he, it was like, we just need to get him on the day that, like, vulnerability is, like, a thing that he wants to, like, show that he can display or, or, you know, and it's like, you can't fake vulnerability, right? So it's like, that's actually helps you when you're trying to make a documentary, you know, with an element of, you know, truth and integrity. And so you can just, like, lean on that. I mean, I think there's a little bit of, like, timing in that regard.

Like, it's good to be vulnerable and honest and open with your feelings now. And I think Alex maybe being the ultimate sort of competitors, like, well, I'm going to go harder on that than anyone else has. Watch, you know, and it's like great. This is great storytelling, man. This is what we need, please. You know, you can kind of press that button, you know. And like Gotham said, we also like architected, you know, sort of the or designed, you know, the interview sort of process to, you know, faintly. not, like, very seriously, but faintly resemble, you know, his, the way he talked about his

therapy and what that was like, and mostly just in terms of, like, like Gotham said, sitting in a chair for hours on end and, you know, not cutting and not letting him take a bathroom break. And unfortunately, for us, like, that works both ways, you know, so like, we didn't get a break either, and it was exhausting, but it was, it was fruitful, I think, you know. Ben mentioned Francesa and Katie Kirk, both of whom appear in this documentary. There's a lot of participation from people speaking candidly about Arod, often warmly, but candidly about his transgressions, both on the field and off. And I'm curious, you know, how you guys thought about sequencing those conversations with broadcasters, with former teammates, with his ex-wife,

and how him knowing that those folks were going to be speaking with you, how do you think that that influenced sort of the degree of candor and vulnerability that you got. Because it's one thing to be able to sit there and kind of tell your own story. But when you know that, you know, the guy you lied to on camera, your ex-wife with whom you're still, you know, friends and co-parenting, but someone who you had a rupture with, you know, Katie Couric was devastating to him in parts of this documentary. I'm curious, sort of how their participation, you think, influenced the way he participated. Well, I would say that, first of all, we curated that list of people by, you know, Eric and I talk about this a lot, like, almost like characters in his life. They

actually intersected with him. They have things they can talk about, real life experience and anecdotes. They're not just commentators or pundits who have an opinion on him. Like, that stuff you can get in the archive, and it's great, by the way. Like, you use a lot of that as a filmmakers, like, what is the public narrative about this guy? But these are all people who intersected with him in some ways, in some ways very intimately, obviously his ex-wife, et cetera. In some ways, Katie Couric, who, you know, is really, they're not, like, close friends. Like, they, you know, he was on 60 Minutes.

He did have some version of a personal relationship with her, but not particularly, you know, intense. And so I think that was a factor. He was aware, you know, and for some of them, he actually, like, Cynthia's ex-wife who first was like not sure she wanted to participate he called her and said no I'm doing this it's important to me you should do it and you should be totally honest I'm not going to I'm not involved in the questions or you know there's no ground rules be honest and and so that was really great and I think again to Eric's like what he was saying is like once

you're in you're in and I mean it wasn't like every conversation was easy. And there were some times who said, guys, really? Like, do we have to go there? And we're like, yeah, like we do. You know, that doesn't mean he has to answer every question. There are definitely days where he's like, I just don't want to talk about that. I don't feel comfortable. And this is really hard for me. And, you know, he just keep pushing or come back another day. But he's a smart guy. And he knew if we're going to do this and do it well, then you can't put too many conditions on it. Yeah, he wanted it to be great, you know? And he, And I think what was really important for us when we first talked to him was that our definitions

of what would make this great were the same. And so when things get hairy or sticky or rough, you know, when you have days where he not quite so politely says today is not the day, you know, like, then you go back to like, well, this is what we talked about in the beginning. Do you still agree with that? If you change your mind, let's have that conversation. If you do still agree with it, then we can pause and we'll come back tomorrow, you know? And it's not like we're necessarily like smiling at each other and high-fiving the next day, you know, but maybe we actually get somewhere.

Yeah, there's probably a version of this that's a lot longer and goes even deeper into some of the more salacious aspects of his story. Maybe it's not a version that he would have participated in. That's the trade-off. Yeah, and, you know, there's all sorts of stuff. I mean, from the probably apocryphal, did he have a painting of himself as a centaur, which he has denied, but it will never die. Or his actual documented relationships with celebrities. And you acknowledge that stuff in the briefest possible way. You know, maybe he'll say, I had a lot going on at the time. It's a major understatement. And, you know, maybe you'll show a quick

photo of Madonna or Cameron Diaz or Jennifer Lopez or I don't know if J-Lo was even in this at all. And these are whole chapters of his life as a public figure that could have been explored in theory. So was it just that, A, you wanted him on board and thought it would be more revealing if he was, and he might not have wanted to go down that road, or even some roads that he probably would have been happier to go down, like talking about himself as a businessman and an entrepreneur and a big shot in the NBA, which there's only the briefest mention of at the end also? So was it just that you thought that wouldn't add really to our understanding of who he was as a person or his career and his lapses in judgment?

I'll start with the last thing first, the like Timberwolves aspect, you know, I mean, I think that's just very simply like not the story we set out to tell, you know? And like that is still, that's the way we said it to him and it's not, it wasn't just to like blow him off. It was the truth is like, well, that story is just beginning. Like, that's a different thing. If you want to tell that story, that's for 10 years from number,

or 20 years from them, you know, that's not now. Like, the story, like, you have a great story to tell. You want to tell it. Like, let's stay focused here and not get distracted, you know, at least in terms of our work. You know, his work, obviously, he's more, much more focused on that, you know, except for the days when he shows up to do an interview with us. But, you know, in terms of just like what we set out to do, like, let's keep the North Star and the North Star, the Compass pointing north, you know. As far as, like, the, you know, more salacious stuff, I mean, I think there's just like, there's a Madonna being included. in the form of a headline was like, you can't, that changed your marriage.

You can't ignore it, you know, that's material here. And maybe you don't, we don't need to ask, like, how many dates you went on and what you guys did afterwards because, like, I don't really want to know personally, you know? But like, but I think we have to acknowledge it and we have to talk about the fallout, the impact on your personal life and, you know, if any, your professional life. That's where it's relevant. In terms of, you know, the. other, you know, people, whether it's Cameron Diaz or Kate Hudson or J-Lo. It was just like,

how are they impacting the story that we're telling, you know? And then if they are meaningfully impacting it, like, you know, Katie Kirk wasn't a planned interview subject at first. She was the last interview. We dead for the project, you know. So you kind of just have to like wait and see how it plays out. And there were conversations all along the way. Like is, you know, is this a storyline worth, you know, including? If so, do we reach out to them? as a possible interview subject. And, you know, we just, eventually you get tired of having the same conversation and arriving at the same answer of no.

Like, that's not the story we're telling, you know. And so you drop it. But it took a while for some of those. Kate Hudson, you know, did come up. And we tried. Like, and she was open to talking more about that. And then I think we were trying to reach out to her. And it was just like she couldn't do it.

She was doing some, you know, taping a show, this thing for Netflix. And so we just, and we just ran out of time on that one. The J-Lo one has come up a lot because, you know, everybody, J-Lo happened recently. And it's almost like falls into that Timberwolves thing. It's like, well, it's just the story we're telling. And for the sake of, I get it.

I mean, it's J-Lo and, you know, very public in some ways. But like now that just, that introduces a sort of timeline issue that we're really not, like, dealing with in the film. And it just didn't make sense for us. So we were the ones on that one. And then we're just like, no. Like, I don't think it makes sense, you know, because it's just going to complicate. I mean, I think we're all storytellers here, and you've heard the horrible expression is, you know, killing babies.

And, like, yeah, there's good, interesting stuff that doesn't belong in the film. And you just, those are choices you make. You know, storytelling is a series of choices. And those are the ones that we made. You know, as you think about the landscape of modern active athletes, Obviously, there are some very important parts of Arod's story that are idiosyncratic to his biography, his relationship with his family, his father, sort of the pressure of coming up so young. There are other parts of his biography that I think would be interpreted differently if they unfolded in 2025, right? Like, I imagine that him signing a huge contract with a team as a free agent would draw some headlines,

but generally I think we're more understanding of athletes getting paid what they're worth as sort of a commentariat and as fans. And then there's the pressure of the Yankees. So I'm just, I'm curious what you think, you know, if A-Rod were to emerge sort of as a new prospect today, how much of the pressures and sort of forces that bandied him about are the same and which ones are different because I kept thinking through, you know, he gets trotted out as a cautionary tale in baseball. You don't want to be like Arod. He's never going to see the Hall of Fame, you know, his ego sort of derailed his career. And there are parts of his story that I think would be different today. And there are parts of it that I think are still pressures that athletes face. So what is the, you know, the first round draft pick? in 2025 version of A-Rod look like? Is he still the same guy, or is he markedly different? I think it's a really great question. And, you know, I think, I don't know so much about, like, for example,

because it just happened last year, both Shohei Otani and Juan Soto signed for 700 million plus, right? I think both of them. And to your point, we largely celebrate them. Like, I mean, if you watch the World Series, it's like, it's a bargain for Show Hey, Otani. you like crunch the numbers and like what the Dodgers seem to have made like and it's celebrated and Alex is not that and like you know that I mean as we talk about a lot in the dock like it sort of became the thing along with his and then when you dig into his upbringing with his father

etc those are in my opinion the two principal things that started to give birth to Arod and just like he even having to take ownership of the choices he made but I think you know It's also interesting he came at a time before, or largely his story, before social media. So he was like living in the public square, but in the more traditional tabloids and tabloid culture and stuff like that versus like Instagram culture. So it's just, it's a very different circumstance. And I think he was at an interesting flashpoint. He is the sort of cautionary tale. But I don't even know, like, you can't replicate those circumstances anymore.

Right. We all live. we get to own our own stories because, you know, like everybody has their own Instagram account and is like sort of already telling the story of themselves that they want the public to see. And so it's just a very different thing. I think it would have been a very different set of circumstances for him had he, you know, come of age in this time. I know you can't get completely in his head and there's a limit to how much you can psychoanalyze him.

But because his dad's departure leaving the family is such a formative foundational moment in his life or certainly the story he tells about his life, I was fascinated in the docu-series you cover this brief reunion that they had when Cynthia, his wife at the time, engineered this meeting in Minnesota during a series where his dad came back, hadn't seen him for years and years, and watched him in the series. and Alex talks about how he had one of the best series of his life. He was sort of trying to prove it to his dad. Hey, here's what you missed, essentially. And it was so fascinating to me that he cut off contact at that point. He essentially shut down that attempt at bringing them back together because he seems so desperate for affection, for everyone's affection. And maybe the root of that is not having his dad's affection during that formative time.

And yet when there was perhaps a chance, At reconciliation, he was actually the one who was really resistant to that and ultimately decided that he wanted no part of it. So I wonder what you gleaned from your conversations with him or what insight you might have into why that was, because you could imagine a completely different alternate history where maybe they don't get back together and their best friends forever, but they're at least on speaking terms and in communication and they have a relationship. and maybe as he tells it, at least, that could have saved him from making some subsequent

mistakes. So why do you think he shut that down? I mean, I think it's a really interesting question. And I think it's only now that Alex can talk and reflect on his like yearning to be liked and the sort of his sort of like serial cultivation of father figures, you know, in like Lou Panella and others and Dr. David as well. Like, he can talk about that now. I don't personally, and I think he would agree with this. I don't think those were conscious attempts, right? Like, I think, like, he was very angry, obviously, at his father and, you know, couldn't forgive him.

And we kind of, like, jokingly, half-jokingly referred to, like, Alex's, you know, F-off moment at the end of episode one as, like, the sort of, like, original sin of his life, you know? Maybe that's the real birth of A-Rod, if you want to go there and not when it's coined by Dave Neathouse, but in the moment he decided like he'd he'd rather not bring his father along that he couldn't forgive him and reconcile with him but that doesn't so he could like know that on the one hand like you know off but on the other hand not necessarily know that like in doing that he was creating like a much larger hole in himself that he was going to be struggling to fill for probably the rest of his life you know he wasn't necessarily conscious of that that you know what I

mean. So that is my sort of like read on that. Again, you know, obviously we're in hazardous territory trying to overly psychoanalogue without any of us being a psychiatrist or psychotherapist, but it's my take anyways, Gougham. I just think that, you know, it's one of the things that we talked a lot about consistently, which is like A-Rod led to so many of these mistakes and bad decisions and, you know, not just as it relates to baseball and his Hall of Fame chances, etc. But in his personal life and some of that and things that he really struggled with. But it's also like the thing that gave birth to 696 home runs. And, you know, short of like the controversy, like, he's one of the greatest baseball players of any era. You know, he's just historically awesome.

And maybe if all of his father hadn't left him and maybe if, you know, all these other things, none of that would have happened. If he was a perfectly happy guy, you know, like it definitely motivated him in that scene described, it motivates him. He knows his dad's watching and he wants to prove to him, this is what you missed. This is what you walked away from. So like if you sort of build out that metaphor

even more, like I don't know, maybe if he had a happy support of dad like he wouldn't have, he might have been a happier guy. I mean, it seemed to work out for Derek Jeter as we point out. But maybe for A-Rod, it wouldn't. You know, and he wouldn't be the guy who had 696 home runs

and be one of the type of the game. If I could just say one thing, you know, on the, the Jeter comparison, I mean, this is exactly why we, like, included him and made as much of, you know, their, not just their relationship in terms of telling that story, but the compare contrast of their personalities and their backgrounds, which shapes your personality, you know, is like, Alex was a better player than Derek, as, as everyone says, like, and I don't even think Derek would argue with that, but like, but what he didn't have was the EQ, right? The emotional intelligence that Derek has, that makes him elite, you know? Yeah, and I did wonder, you know, does that framing of Alex versus A-Rod as if, you know, the A-Rod isn't part of Alex, it's this sort of Jekyll and Hyde, like, does that let him off the hook in a way? Because it's kind of this, you know, it's as if it's a separate person in a way, even though he's acknowledging that that's in him or there's that weakness. And he has had this impulse in the past to blame others for problems that he's created, right, as he did and as he acknowledges having done with Bud Zilig, for instance, during the whole suspension saga.

And I wonder whether part of that, not that it's not something that could affect you for life, your dad walking out on your family at that age or any age, of course. But, you know, how much is on him, right? And how much of his just sort of using his dad, I guess, as the boogeyman for, this is why I turned out that way. And how do you navigate, you know, holding yourself responsible versus blaming someone who really did do you a deep harm. But at some point, do you have to take accountability? and say, you know, it's on me, too, which it seems like he's doing at this stage, but maybe wasn't for a while. I mean, Ben, you're saying that so nicely, but that's a very tough question that you sort of just proposed there. But, I mean, we're at, no, I look, whether or not we succeeded, like, I'll let you guys be the judge, but we were cognizant of all that, you know, along the way, of trying to

ensure that his father was not just like escape, go, punching bag, get out of jail, free card, you know, to just pass the blame along. so there's like a balance you know you have to strike in terms of like it would also be foolish and inaccurate to deny that you know that that's a you know critical piece of his psychology and maybe the critical piece you know but and also I think to your point about like letting him off the hook in terms of like you know Alex or Zerad I mean again we were trying to like shove it down everybody's throat at the end but personally where I arrive and hopefully there's room for interpretation here for everybody, but where I arrive is they're the same person and

it's a false distinction, frankly. So the title is kind of a misdirect in my mind. That's how I make my piece with it anyways, but it was, you know, we attempted to bake that into the storytelling as artfully as possible and not just kind of wave our hands about it. Well, just to psychoanalyze him a little further, I wonder what the two of you make of his decision then to embark on a career as a broadcaster, right? This is a guy who's clearly trying to have accountability for his past mistakes, be self-reflective about what the need for attention has done to him, what the perception of other people has inspired him to do, and yet he chooses to be a part of Fox's broadcast crew. We see him every October. Is it just the A-Rod making

its presence felt? What do you make of that? I think that's for the sequel. I mean, I would say, look at very simply, and I'm probably oversimplifying. Dude loves baseball. baseball. He leased baseball. And, you know, he's good at it, too. Like, he's actually a really good broadcaster. And even on that broadcast, the Fox broadcast, you know, his co-hosts, David Ortiz and Derek Teeter are kind of like heroes and champions. And they live off in a good way, the laurels of like delivering in the big moments and being the captain and all. And David is David. Like he's just all joking around and all, you know, he's big poppy. Alex is the baseball nerd, like he is the baseball nerd who loves baseball, who, I mean, we were around him a lot, the amount of study that he does, like getting prepared for these things.

He knows everything about every hitter and every pitcher. And he just, it just, it's who he is. It's the thing that he's greatest and the things that he loves more than anything. And he's found a place that actually people recognize with all the enemies and stuff that they've won. And so I think that to me is where it's, is. You know, he's sort of at home there. And I think this definitely helps him. Like a lot of people like, you know, so far the reviews have been, oh, he's, that's interesting. That's more accountable than I thought he would be or whatever. And I think this helps him move to that next chapter. And I think that's part of the motivation absolutely for doing this. Well, you both have worked with a lot of athletes on previous projects. And Gotham, you've worked with some of the greatest of all time in many sports, Tom Brady and LeBron and Kobe and Simone Biles. and the list goes on. And so I wonder how you think Alex Rodriguez's psychology mentality compares to these other

greats in their own fields, because that's what's always fascinated me is that there's this egotism, but also an insecurity. And maybe those things go hand in hand, but just the great confidence that he has on the field and the seeming lack of it in every other sphere that he has dealt with throughout his life. Do you think that's a common makeup for someone who is as successful as he has been? Or is that as unusual as it seems to me? And did that draw you to him? You know, I think that's absolutely a consistent archetype, you know, and that's the, you know, I think it's his brother, his stepbrother, Joe, who says he's a killer. And like that's, you know, Kobe Bryant used to tell me all the time. He's

like, I'm a serial killer. Like, you know, like, that mentality of, like, competition and wanting to dominate. And Arod absolutely had that. He also had, and even Tom Brady, he was like, the nicest guy in the world. It's like, oh, I'm being discounted. I mean, in his entire, he's, I mean, until the very end when he played, he all was in his mind was, you know, the 199th pick. The guy who had been passed over by every team, including the New England Patriots, six

times. And he just kept on telling himself that narrative, that chip on his shoulder. So going back to your earlier question about like the father figure in the absence is like, I think I have found consistently at the highest level what differentiates the very good to the great or elite is not the physical attributes. It's the mental and emotional attributes of like, what's the story they're telling themselves? What's that discipline and that endless grind? you know and because and part of like what how do they motivate themselves and usually it's like nobody believes in me like you know and and i would tell tom brady all the time i'm dude i people believe in you like everyone told you at this point and he just like somehow convinced

himself no like you know everyone thinks paint manning's better than me it's like okay like but you could see like that's the sort of narrative and i think even for Alex like oh everyone thinks Derek Jeter's, you know, better than me and better leader. Okay, cool. You know, let me show you. I mean, so I've seen that consistently, and I think Alex definitely sort of falls into that archetype. Well, I'm glad you guys got to make this project, and I hope there is a sequel at some point, because my appetite for Alex Rodriguez's content is insatiable, not quite quenched despite your best efforts, but I'm glad you got him to seemingly open up as much as you did. So Gotham Shopra and Eric Ledrew, thanks so much for coming on to talk about us.

Thank you, Ben and Meg. Appreciate your time. Yeah, thanks, both. All right. Well, if you check out Alex versus A-Rod, let us know which one you think won, Alex or A-Rod. Also, I mentioned hang up and listen at the top of the pod. You may not actually be interested in hearing me talk about Shador Sanders, but you may be interested in a segment on our most recent episode, which we talked to Massachusetts State Senator John Keenan, who previously supported and voted for the legalization of sports betting, but has since changed his mind and become an advocate for far stricter regulations. We talked to him on the most recent show

about the bill he's sponsoring, which would limit prop bets and advertising and some of the other more predatory tactics sports books employ. We got into how realistic that legislation is. What made him switch from a yes to affirm no. It's all potentially of interest to effectively wild listeners and touches on things that we have spoken about on this podcast. So I will link to that on the show page. A few follow-ups, we got an email from listener Andrew, who sent us a picture of a snack food sponsored by Yankees outfielder Jason Dominguez, though in classic low-budget sponsorship fashion without any Yankees insignia or pinstripes in sight. And Andrew writes, move over Mike Trout, all hail Jason Dominguez, the Munch King. Not the Munchkin, the Munch King.

We used to talk a lot about Mike Trout's super pretzel sponsorship, which, sad, sadly has been discontinued. But perhaps this is the successor. Jason Dominguez sponsoring Munch King, a snack brand, this particular packaging for naturally sweet plantain strips with sea salt. I know where your mind might have gone when I said Munch King, but don't you dare. It's a snack brand that's been around since 1978, I'll have you know. And maybe this really is the air to Mike Trout's super pretzel spokespersonship, though it's kind of a come down for Jason Dominguez from the Martian to the Munch King. I'll put a photo on the show page. Last week we mused midpod. About whether a cannon is a gun, I was of the opinion that it is, that not all guns are

canon, but all cannon are guns. Of course, we got a message on Blue Sky from listener Zane, who said, this is a weird message, but I'm a canon engineer. Ben is right. Canon is a gun. Just a big one, essentially. I've long said that the effectively wild audience includes at least one person from every possible profession.

Once again, vindicated, we have a Canon engineer in the audience. Is anyone here a Canon engineer? Somewhere in the distance, Zane fires up. off around. We also got a message from Patreon supporter Jonas wrote in to say, is a canon a gun? I know Meg was afraid to ask this because of predictable onslaught of messages, but the answer is too good not to provide. It is likely that all guns are named after a specific canon named Gunnielda. That name is related to Gunner Henderson's, so it sort of comes full circle. I'm sure Ben Zimmer can tell you more, but this is the etymological equivalent of a middle

middle fastball. And Jonas links us to the Edom Online entry for gun, which says mid-14th century, an engine of war that throws rocks, arrows, or other missiles from a tube by the force of explosive powder or other substance. Apparently a shortening of woman's name Gunilda, found in Middle English, Gonilda, Canon, and in an Anglo-Latin reference to a specific gun from a 1330 munitions inventory of Windsor Castle. The woman's name is from Old Norse Gunnhilder, a compound of Gunner and Hilder, both meaning war or battle. That's where the tenuous Gunner Henderson connection comes in. And finally, a message from listener Sam, who says toward the end of episode 2404, Ben highlighted a recent instance when a college football coach memorably shot down the idea that an upcoming

game was a must win. This made me think of a similar exchange in the weeks leading up to Super Bowl 28 when the Buffalo Bills were heading into their fourth consecutive Super Bowl after losing the first three. A reporter asked Bill's head coach Marve Levy if the game was a must win, and he responded, this is not a must win. World War II was a must win. Toss that one on the multi-sport commentator pile. Well, in fact, Sam, I must offer a slight fact check. I believe it was before Super Bowl 27, not Super Bowl 28. Who can keep track of all those losing Bill's Super Bowl appearances? But I did just search this in the newspaper archives, and I came up with a clipping from January 29, 1993. There is a little bit of frenzy in Buffalo at the moment because the bills are

O for two at the Super Bowl. An amateur analyst suggested to Levy that this upcoming one is a must win for the franchise. The coach snickered at that. World War II was a must win, he said. Often, Levy leans on history to teach his football lessons. In the week after his team won his third straight AFC title, he talked to the bills not about Dallas and Pasadena, but rather about Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln? He always knows what to say, quarterback Jim Kelly said. Sometimes people laugh about him and wonder where he's getting with this, but the more you talk to the man, the more you understand what he's all about. And Levy would know about World War II being a must win because he enlisted in the Army Air Force during World War II. And delightfully, he's still

with us at age 100. And you know if this were a football podcast, we would have tried to cold call Marflevy. But football legend, Hall of Famer, member of both the pro football Hall of Fame and the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, sort of a dual citizen like me. That's the ultimate way to shut down must win creep. World War II was a must win. I think I might borrow that line the next time we get an alleged must-win game that is not actually must-win. Even better if you can back it up by having been in World War II. And that I cannot claim. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild,

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in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. And a link to sign up for Effectively Wild Secret Santa. Deadline December 10th. Thanks to Shane McKean for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Effectively wild