The Jordan Harbinger Show - 688: A-Rod | Still Having a Ball After All

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

A-Rod (aka Alex Rodriguez) (@AROD) is a 3x MVP, 14-time All-Star, and World Series champion. As of 2016, he was the highest-paid player in major league baseball history. After 23 years in the game, he's an investor and business mentor preaching the gospel of financial literacy for all. What We Discuss with A-Rod: The concept of VCP: vision, capital, and people. What Alex has learned about business from mentors like Warren Buffett and Magic Johnson, and what he hopes to pass on to his own mentees. How growing up as a poor kid in Miami informs the way Alex treats people today. The need for financial literacy to become part of the American education system's core curriculum. The "Breakfast Club" that keeps Alex's relationship with his daughters real. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/688 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Miss our conversation with world champion boxer and entrepreneur Laila Ali? Catch up with episode 309: Laila Ali | Finding Strength, Spirit, and Personal Power here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Today we're talking with three-time MVP, 14-time All-Star and World Series champion Alex Rodriguez, aka A-Rod. As of 2016, he was the highest paid player in Major League Baseball history. The average career in baseball is about five years. He played for 23 years, set to make several hundred million dollars before age 42. Not bad. Today we're talking about everything but baseball. Y'all know I'm an indoor kid.

We touch on growing up fatherless. Alex turned towards mentors to keep them on. on the right track. Sometimes he went a bit outside of that track. We'll talk about that today as well. We also discuss fame, family, business, and how to decide what your priorities are or what they should be. To be honest, I enjoyed this conversation. It went in some surprising directions, and I think you'll enjoy it as well. Now, here we go with Alex Rodriguez. Look, a lot of athletes go broke after they retire. That didn't seem to happen to you. In fact, you're known for shrewd investments and business savvy. Where did you learn all of that? Yeah, knock on wood, right? Yeah. I think from very

early on, for me, I've always had a passion for two things, right? Early on, I've always enjoyed the two bees, right? Baseball and business. My father was very much in the business spirit. He was an entrepreneur. He was great with numbers. He was a banker, a mezz and lender, kind of a surre entrepreneur. When I was born in New York City, 1975, we owned our own shoe store in our apartment in Washington Heights. And he was very much known for being like the human calculator. Obviously back then, we'd have calculators everywhere, and we didn't have an iPhone, and he would do other numbers in his head very quickly. Wow.

Everywhere I traveled, somewhere along the way, I would say, I used to buy shoes from your father, and I remember you when you were two-year-old or three-year-old. Wow. So I've always enjoyed it. I think part of anything that you do that you're successful, usually you have a passion and a respect for it. And I think that's been a big key for me. Why do you think other players don't learn this stuff? Yeah, their dads aren't entrepreneurs, but is that the only reason?

No, I think, look, you have to have passion and understanding. I do think that athletes have the potential to be really, really great business people, both men and women. I think that it's a little bit of rewiring of the mind. In business, I talk to the business community almost daily. I sit on my desk and I answer the phone, I'm available, and we're sharing ideas, sharing best practices, sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly of what's happening in the market and being connected. All the things that you do when you're connected as a Yankee or as an NBA player or an NFL player,

What's interesting about the way athletes go about their business is differently than the way they go about their sports. In sports, they're usually really, really good at saying, well, if I want to play basketball, I want Michael Jordan or LeBron in my team. If I want to play football, I want Tom Brady. If I want to play baseball, I want Maria Rivera or Andy Petit. But when it comes to business, they don't try to go out and find the Michael Jordan or the Tom Brady. and if you really want to simplify it and take a step back, one of the things that's worked really well for me is the concept of VCP, vision, capital, people.

And the idea is if an athlete sits back and says, what is my vision? What do I want to do when I grew up? What do I will do when I retire? That's my vision. How much capital do I want to deploy or can I deploy? And then can I go find the best people in the world to go invest my capital if I want to be a passive investor?

And if you do that and you hand your money over to Starwood or to Blackstone or to KKR or Carlisle and not think very much, these are the smartest people in the world, you should do fine over time. Or like Warren Buffett says, put your money in an SMP account, pay very little fees, and just go take a nap for 20 years. So I think there's a little bit of overcomplication sometimes that happens. And I think as athletes, all we need to do is really understand what is our competitive advantage and then oversimplify things a little bit. Yeah, I think that what's the statistic? Do you happen to know it's like 87% of athletes are broke or bankrupt shortly after leaving the league? That sounds high, but it sounds possible as well.

It's a crazy high number. I'm not sure exactly what it is. When I entered the league, we were an industry in sports that was making around a billion dollars collectively, and that includes every sport. Today, we're well over $5 billion and rising quickly as salaries keep getting higher and franchise values keep increasing in enterprise. but yet that number that you mentioned keeps going higher and higher.

So it's obviously not an issue of how much athletes are making is an issue of the process and how they protect it. Were you thinking about this at all when you were sort of earning the mega major league baseball box? Were you thinking about this

out of ambitious planning for the future? Or was it more like fear of going broke and maybe how early did you start thinking about this? I think a combination of both, a fear of going broke for sure. I remember sports. Illustrated came out with that famous broke and then story

on Sports Illustrated and then there was another one I think ESPN did in 30 for 30 and it talked a lot about that as well. That was a concern but then there was also a passion to want to be able to protect and grow your capital over time and do it in a

matter that has a 20, 30, 40 a year vision, not the quick hit. During the 2008 recession when real estate developers they got crushed. I know you had some, I guess, SW2 income, really, from baseball and a fair amount of it, if the news is correct. So is that one of the ways in which you grew a ton and bought a bunch of properties? Because it seems like if you, what's that Warren Buffett quote? Like when other people are scared, you can be greedy. And when

other people are greedy, you should be reserved. It seems like that had to be pretty good timing. That was. And again, it was a scary time for anybody who had real estate holdings. It's scary time for all Americans, right? Because the market was dry. The debt. markets were dry. There was not a lot of capital. There's very little liquidity. People were getting squeezed. You know, thank goodness that, you know, some of my loans were very, very tight. Thank goodness I had the liquidity to pay some down, get some big write downs, and then to be able to go and strike while, you know, there was blood in the streets. And we're kind of entering a little bit of that time now where if you do have liquidity and you're strong when others are weak,

that's when you can do some real damage. Yeah. Warren Buffett says something like when you, you know, you probably know this better. Didn't he give you some advice? Like once you find your pitch, and I don't know if that's a baseball metaphor or really he meant literally like a pitch.

What was his advice? Because I mean, he's done pretty well. You could probably trust something that comes out of his mouth when it comes to investing. Jordan, I like you because you butcher these scenes almost as bad as me. But I know everything you're saying. I understand it because that's the language that I speak.

No, I mean, what he basically talked about be super disciplined. He talked about Ted Williams being one of the most disciplined hitters in the game. That was his favorite hitter. But Ted Williams never swung outside of the stride zone. And he really stayed in his sweet spot. And what he said was when you get that pitch, you don't have to swing at everything like baseball. But when you get that pitch, don't try to get a hit or a double, go for a home run. It seems like this is, home run is an understatement. I mean, don't you, you have like 15,000 units now. And that might even be outdated information. Is that correct? We've gotten up to about 15,000. We're probably trading at half of that.

The market's been one that buyers are paying incredible prices for these assets. There's over $3 trillion sitting on the sidelines waiting to buy assets. And that's the biggest difference, I believe, from 2022 in where we are today versus 2008. I think people today are in a much better position for this environment. They've made a gazillion dollars over the last 11 years. It's been one of the greatest runs over the last, you know, many, many decades. So while the market is a little dry today, people are sitting with a lot of cash. That seems like it's probably a good thing, at least in terms of not having another meltdown. But alas, this is not a macro economy podcast. I've heard you kind of have Warren Buffett on speed dial. Is that accurate or is that press hype? A little bit of

Press height. I wouldn't say speed dial, but Warren's been a great friend and mentor of mine for, you know, over two decades. I've spent a lot of time in Omaha with him, and he's been very generous. And he's always been someone that I can lean on and it's given me tremendous advice over the years. You have other mentors, yeah? I was doing my research and a friend of mine was saying, oh, you know, in fact, it's one of Magic Johnson's people. And he's like, oh, you should, you know, Magic talks to him all the time. And I'd love to hear about that relationship, because it seems like it's a pretty important one, especially in your business. Yeah, Irvin, I call him Irvin, right?

Yeah, of course. You know, he's an incredible human being. He was my favorite player of all times in basketball. He was an ultimate winner, came out of Michigan State. He was a champion there, a champion in high school, and five championships with the Lakers. And then he was able to, you know, leverage that incredible Hall of Fame career to having a Hall of Fame career in the boardroom.

And about 25 years ago, we went out for little coffee for, you know, supposed to be 30 minutes. And three hours later and 11 pages of notes later, I was thrilled and humbled that he shared his playbook with me. And what he shared with me that night 25 years ago over three-hour dinner, it's a lot of the staples that I run a rut corp today. And it's an ability to be able to invest with great people,

great partners, and to be able to do well and good in the community at the same time, and especially my community of African Americans and Latinos. So like a lot of players, you didn't exactly grow up with a silver spoon in your mouth, did you? No, I didn't. I was born in New York, raised in Miami. You know, even though we came from modest beginnings,

my mother worked two jobs. She was a secretary in the morning and served table at night. And I had my older brother, Joe, and my older sister, Susie. And the triangle of them did an incredible job raising me. My sister was kind of the secretary of education, and my brother was kind of secretary of sports, and my mom was kind of just trying to make it rain every single day for us. I had the opportunity to be at the Boys and Girls Club. My father left us when I was 10.

That was one of the really dark moments in my life. But because the Boys and Girls Club and a great support cast at home, I was able to turn on cable every night when I got home and turn on the Mets game on WOR and the braids on TBS. And while we were kind of poor, I never felt poor. I felt that I was rich with vision and I had rich dreams

and big thoughts and big ideas. And, you know, thank goodness I've been able to manifest some of them. Yeah, no kidding. Back in the day, like you mentioned this actually in another interview. I wish I could remember which one.

But you mentioned that you kind of felt, or at least your mother felt at the mercy of the landlord. And now owning, let's just say, thousands of apartment units because it does fluctuate, and I think over 14 states, did growing up that way inform how you treat your tenants now, or are you kind of pretty far removed from that part of the business? No, for sure. I mean, look, I remember as a kid praying for a few things,

one, that the landlord would stop raising the rents because we had to move every 18 months because of that. And two, that I wish God can slow down time, because these 30 days, it felt like it was coming every three or four days. And I saw the stress building on my mom and she had to, you know, get a lot of tip money and salary to pay the rent every month. And I remember as a child, getting down on one knee or two knees and praying to God and saying, if I ever have an opportunity to trade places with the landlord, I'm going to do that. And sure enough, about a decade later in my early 20s, I had an opportunity to buy a duplex here in Miami, not too far from Miami Arena, where the Miami-Heep play.

And that was my first duplex, and that led to a four-plex and eight-plex, and, you know, the rest became history. Yeah, wow. You mentioned growing up and your mom getting tips. I heard that you would get picked up from school by your mom's friend as a kid, dropped at whatever restaurant she happened to be working at, and then go home at midnight with her, which now all the things we know about sleep science, which I'm sure you're familiar with being an athlete.

Like, that's so bad for you as a kid to do that in so many ways. You know, when you're growing up in Miami and you're playing ball at the Boys and Girls Club and you go to a school that you like and you have cable TV and you're able to watch baseball games and you're excited to see your mom at Latin America at 10 p.m. and wait to midnight to get home, there was nothing about me that I felt that I was poor or, you know, sometimes you go to your friend's house and they have really nice houses and they got a lot of food and cereal. I'm like, man, that's a lot of cereal. I wish we had that much cereal. Yeah.

Those things that it just stick out. but I never felt like I had anything missing. And I think that's the beauty about sports. I never saw color. I never saw anything but teamwork. And, you know, you get what you get out of it. In order to win, you've got to produce. You've got to be a good teammate.

You've got to collaborate. And sports was a great teacher to me. I heard you used to count her tips and put them under the mattress, which is, it's what a change now. I assume you don't keep your nine-figure real estate fortune under a mattress. That'd be a hell of a mattress. It's got to be a nice change. actual bankers that held your money for you.

And no worries if it's all there when you get back home. Well, Jordan, I used to ask my mom, mom, why are you helping me raise the mattress so you can put this $700 that you've been raising for the last 25 days under the mattress? I said, there's banks everywhere. We drive by them all the time. And she says, son, you're going to learn,

I don't trust banks. I do trust my mattress. And that was kind of the first thought of why I thought financial literacy was so important. And we've heard this all the time, and it sounds like vanilla, you know, knowledge is power. But it truly is. I mean, the way that capital markets work, the way that the investing, the way that equity works, debt works, the difference between an employer and employee, all these things are kind of a language inside the world of, you know, finance. and it's something that I believe we should work really, really hard in the future

to make this part of the academic public school system where you should be learning financial literacy in school and that's a shame that it's not. I agree 100%. I think the closest we came was counting fake plastic coins and fake plastic bills that we did like once every three months or something like that and I just thought, this seems more important than we're giving it credit for.

Meanwhile, I'm putting things in alphabetical order and we spend three months doing that. I could tell you which skill I use more often. And you went from poor to, I guess just not to sugarcoat it, you went from poor to poor-ish, you know, to rich over and almost overnight. I mean, you got $1.35 million, I think, at age 17. That was like the first, that's enough money to buy your mama house and still have enough probably slash possibly to mess up

the rest of your entire life if you wanted to. Well, it was a lot of money. And my main drive, while I wanted to go to college really badly and play quarterback and shortstop at the University of Miami, That was a school that I signed, and I've been on that board almost 20 years now. The motivation for signing was specifically around my mom and my goals for her. I wanted to retire her. And when I signed that contract, I made her a promise.

I said, Mom, if I signed a contract, you'll never work again. The first thing that I did with my contract was I bought her a house and I bought her a nice car. I bought myself a black Cherokee, and then I went to go play baseball. I was really proud that it's been, I guess, over 30 years, I think, and she's never, never worked a day again. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Alex Rodriguez. We'll be right back. Don't forget to check out the six-minute networking course. The course is free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course.

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You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, back to Alex Rodriguez. Did they offer you something lower that you were tempted to accept? Because I, and I don't know much about the world of sports agents or anything, but it seems like they don't come in with the highest, just a negotiation. You don't come in with the highest offer. it would be, for example, very tempting to take like $700,000 when your paycheck to paycheck and shoving money under the mattress,

it's like, I would imagine there's a part of you that just wants to reach out and grab the first thing that flies your way because it might not be there tomorrow. 100%, and that was my instinct. I mean, if you offer me 500, that's 500,000 more than I have today. But my mom, it tells you a lot about her and her self-esteem and what she believed that we were worth as a family. and the first offer was a million dollars,

and she had a hard no. And she said, if I want one five for my son, and that's the number. And here we are negotiating against the big Seattle Mariners, and it's just her against my mom and my sister and my brother. And I'm sitting here thinking,

like, I never really questioned my mom, but mom, like, are you sure? Yeah, don't mess this one up. Under my breath, we don't want to upset them. Yeah. You know, sure enough, a day or two right before I had to go to the University of Miami,

we negotiated a deal right here in this building at our headquarters at AROCorp. This was another hotel since it got demolished and they have condominiums and we're here in the office. So talk about the world come full circle. We ended up meeting at the halfway point at 1.35. We wanted 1.5. They offered one and we know how you started his interview

is 1.35. I mean, you got a little more than halfway. You still got the jump on them. Yeah. It must have felt incredible, but also I can imagine you be like, mom, I hope you know what you're doing right now. I really hope you know what you're doing. So, Jordan, this was now like at 2 o'clock in the morning, and I'm sitting there with the president

of the Seattle Mariners is my mom and my sister, because at that time, you couldn't have an agent. You had to be represented by family because if not, you lose your eligibility for college. Oh. My agent slash advisor was my sister and my mom. and we are about to sign the contract. I have pen and paper about to sign. And, you know, this is a moment. Everyone leans in.

We've been doing this for three months. And I stop and I say, and two more things. And everybody goes, oh, my gosh, what, what, what? And I said, well, Seattle's very far from here. I'm supposed to be a freshman in college. I need my mom to be flown out three times a year, first class, to come see me for the first three years. And they're like, done. Yeah.

What else? Like, what else? And I said, I'd love to get 12 bats, Louisville slugger, Major League Wood bats, which is a big deal, while I'm in the minor leagues. And they're like, that's it? Are you sure? I'm saying, that's it.

I said, okay, sign it. And I signed the contract. Wow. Yeah, I can imagine they were like, what he's going to ask for some kind of signing bonus that's going to be impossible for us to get right now. Yeah, yikes. Actually, to force you to be represented by family

seems like it's one of those rules that sounds like they're trying to be fair, but actually just puts you at a massive disadvantage against a major organization with a ton of resources at a young age where you have no idea what's going on. Yeah, and look, you have to learn by just the reps. I mean, there's really, there's no class that's going to teach you on how to be a professional of 17.

And I had the great fortune that I had a great manager in Lu Penella. I had a great supporting cast with the likes of Ken Griffey Jr. That was also a number one pick before me, about six or seven years before me. We had Jay Boehner, Randy Johnson, you know, Joey Cora, Felix for me. We had a lot of great kind of mentors that helped my development out tremendously.

You mentioned that your dad, I guess, left, for lack of a better word, when you were young. And I read that you were angry when your father called to congratulate you on the day that you got drafted into Major League Baseball. I want to hear a little bit more about that because it seems like, I understand that. It seems like that's your day, right? And it's he almost left when you needed him. And now he's like, hey, I want to celebrate with you. Was that kind of the mindset on that? Kind of.

I mean, the truth is, once he left at 10, we really didn't reconnect for real until, like, my 23rd birthday. Oh, wow. And it was a trip that Cynthia, the mother of my kids, my ex-wife, who was a dear friend, set it up and give her credit

because I didn't have the courage to kind of do that in the middle of season. We chose Minnesota because it was a little bit out of the way. We stayed in a separate hotel. We scheduled a four-day trip in which he saw me play for four days and Cynthia sat with him and here we are. I mean, I almost played 25 years professionally. And the only four games in my entire career that he

watched me play was in Minnesota with Cynthia at the old Metro dome. And Jordan, it was probably the four best games I played in my entire career. Wow. And I think part of it is I was I was really excited that he was there. And the other part of me was a little bit sad and angry that he was there. And I wanted to show him, all right, here's what you missed. Yeah. So true on that. Chew on that. Yeah, exactly. This might be a dumb question, but whatever. Do you think it harmed the image you had of yourself at that age? I mean, you were young when he left. It's a pretty vulnerable time in a kid's life. There's guilt, there's anger, there's resentment. I think when you're 10, it's hard to understand why your father would leave you, right? I mean, it's something that

wouldn't even go through my mindset with my two beautiful daughters. Like this by far the single most important thing in my life is being a present father. So I didn't understand that at 10. And I think it was probably into my mid-30s where I started diving really deep into therapy that I had to unpack some of those issues and finally forgave myself and understand that, look, this wasn't your fault why he left. He left because he chose to leave. and it wasn't to just maybe a few years ago

that I really got comfortable with that. I think the consequence of those thoughts that you asked the right question is the recourse of feeling like that is you feel like you're not enough. Yeah. And I think over the last, call it handful of years,

I understand that I am. It leaves that void that like, almost like if you want to be loved, if you want to be loved, right? You have to do some big thing, which you did, and then it's always, almost like, well, damn, you know, and then you realize, okay, that wasn't, it had nothing to do with me,

and, you know, my mom was there, my family was there, and this is his loss. But yeah, I mean, it took you 20 plus years to sort of come to terms of that. And you've talked about how other kids had parents at baseball games, you didn't, because your mom's working full time, doubled full time, who knows, and your dad wasn't there. For a lot of people that would make it hard to stay motivated, you know, there's no one there to clap for you when you get a hit. I assume then you must have, even early on had a strong internal sense of drive. Certainly, and that's the only way to survive. But, you know, Jordan, I never looked at it as a victim.

I never said, oh, boy, my parents are not here and my friend's parents are. In a weird way, I've always been able to try to, you know, turn a negative situation into a positive. Yeah. And what that taught me early on, I saw a lot of parents that were overbearing that sometimes they cared so much.

It became toxic. Toxic and basically like a noose around these kids' neck and I felt the pressure on them because they were trying to perform for their parents and, you know, the gift encouraged is, yes, I didn't have them, but be, I didn't have that burden. I can actually go out and self-motivated and self-start every single day

and if I didn't want to do it, nobody was going to be there to push me. And I thought that was an asset. Yeah, so that's kind of how I looked at it. That makes sense that it's an asset, but also a lot of people would go, well, no one's here to push me. So look, my parents, they came to some of my soccer,

some they didn't. I didn't really care, but I pulled my shirt up over my head as a defender because I was bored and the balls on the other end of the field. I didn't have a career in soccer for very long. I think second or third grade was my last season because I wasn't really motivated. There might have been different reasons for that, but I think when you're talking about people performing for their parents, you're right, the pressure can be ridiculous. I assume you took a lot of lessons from your own childhood and are now applying them to being the father of two girls. I mean, was there a time when you went, All right, I got two girls. I'm not going to screw this up like maybe my dad did.

Oh, I mean, look, I definitely came to that conclusion probably within a year or two of him leaving me and leaving our family, right? The one thing I said is basically self-talked to myself. I said, dear Lord, have you ever given me an opportunity to be lucky enough to be a father, I'm going to be the best father I can be and be present and raise kids with high self-esteem?

So that was something that was, you talk about baseball business and looking forward one day to being a father. For sure, that was a motivator. The other thing that I discovered early on was that I was a scholarship kid. And what that meant was I needed and depended on friends, parents and mentors to help me get through my day. Meaning the only way I can get to practice, you know, Pepe's father or Jady's father, who were, you know, lifelong friends of mine, had to take me to practice and take me back home or to the Boys and Girls Club or to Land America to go see my mom.

Therefore, I needed to have good grades. I needed three things. I needed good grades, right, to beat the scholarship kit because I couldn't afford the private school. Number two, I needed to be a good kid with good attitude and be a good model around other kids. And three, I needed to play enough good baseball so they wanted me on the team.

So early on, from 10, 11, 12, 13 years old, I had major responsibilities and consequences if I didn't behave a certain way and if I didn't, you know, pull my weight. I assume you're applying those as well to your teenage girls to break those patterns maybe that you, or negative patterns that you would have had inherited, I guess,

from being raised by a single mom. Or I should say, not by a single mom, without a dad, there's a difference, right? Single moms are kind of superheroes. I'm trying not to throw shade on any single moms by accident. You know how that is. You wouldn't want to do it.

I couldn't get away with that, especially not in the show. This thing will be canceled in 30 seconds. No, exactly. And rightfully so, because I want to be very clear. I have two kids. I've got help. I've got my wife as well. And we are like, how do people do this without resources?

And if you're a single parent, I'm like, there's no way. It's impossible. It's next to impossible. Like you are doing a superhuman feat if you are a single parent raising even one child, let alone multiple kids. By the way, now that you're the father of two teenage girls, Do they get embarrassed when you get recognized and you're out with them?

I feel like if I had a famous dad, I would not want anybody to be like, oh, your dad, he's, your dad's A-Rod, that would be so annoying. My girls want nothing to do with me. I have to trick them into these appointments. She wants to redo her bedroom. And I said, great, how's Thursday at 2.30?

We can have a meeting for an hour. And she's like, Dad, we can do it in 15 minutes. I said, I have an hour book. We're going to get the construction team in here. She's like, it's just a bed and desk. But anyway, it's great. You know, the other part is that a lot of times as kids were bullshitted, right? Like, yeah.

And my therapist called it a bunch of perpetrators all around the hoop, and nobody shoots straight with you. And one of the things that I've wanted to do from very, very early on with my daughters is shoot with them very straight. And obviously appropriate for their age. They're 17 and 14 now. And we started what is called Breakfast Club. And on Sundays, we have no phones, no electronics. the three of us, we sit down for 90 minutes and just have an old school conversation like you and I are having.

And Jordan, at the beginning, they hated it. Of course. They hated it with a passion. And now they love it because it really, I think is just a great tool to be able to sit down in today's world away from your phone, away from social media, and to be a good listener and to be a respectful listener and to articulate stories and storytell. And you know what happens early on? They would say, well, let me get my iPad so I can show you.

I said, no, no, no, no. Tell me the story. I want to hear it. I want to hear a beginning, a middle, and an end. And I said, take your time. Say it again. And when they say something that sounds slippery or perpetrating, I say, wait, Ella, wait, Natasha. That sounded like you're bullshitting.

Start again. And we have to teach your kids at home what BS sounds like. And we have to call them and stop them and start again. And when they see dad going sideways, I say, hey, I want you to call me on it or call me on my BS, because that's the greatest way to connect is when you can communicate

in the most honest, best way. That's a great idea. I like the breakfast club thing. My kids are five months old and two and a half, so it might be a couple, yeah, a little early for them to even, they don't care about electronics, they want to throw sand in the pool.

Like, that's my, so in early photographs, it looks like you're trying out a bat that you colored black with some kind of paint. And then there's another one where you're batting left-handed instead of right-handed. I'm probably reading too much into this. Are you imitating other players for the heck of it, or were you experimenting to see if you could get an edge in the game?

That's really good. I've never been asked that question, and you're dead on. So the two teams that I watched a lot growing up were the 84, 85, 86 Mets, and their big rival was a St. Louis Cardinals with Whitey Herzog and, you know, Ozzy Smith, Tommy Herr, Jack Clark. So the left-ended batting stance is me imitating Willie McGee. What was interesting about both the Mets and the Cardinals, they both led off with a couple of switch hitters.

The Cardinals had Vince Coleman and Willie McGee and Tommy Hur, and the Mets would have Dykstra. They would have Mookie, Wally Backman, Hernandez, Carter, Straw. So I was fascinated by contact and speed and fundamentals, which is far away from what the game is today. It's power and strikeouts, which makes it a much more dilutive, not as exciting game, in my opinion. So in that picture you're talking about,

I was imitating Willie McGee. Interesting. Yeah, I wondered about that because I thought that's not a, when you hold a bat your whole life, you don't switch hands because it's more, you do that for a reason, right? It's not a prop for you and a photo. It's something, it's a part,

basically that bat's a part of your body at that point in your life. So no accident there. Growing up, there was no Instagram. There's no snap. So we had to be creative and actually imitate. And some of my funny friends would be great imitators and they're comedians. And then when you're a jock and you love baseball, you imitate your favorite baseball player. Everyone can imitate stands. And Dan Marino was our guy. And we had Rick Flair and Hulk Hulkhole. Yeah. Those were the days, right? And we had to kind of improvise. And I enjoyed those days. Yeah, yeah, funny. Those are Rick Flair and Hulk Hogg. Man, those got to be some interesting guys. I assume you've seen them out in real life now that you're in those circles.

I know Hulk's got a bad back, but that's got to be surreal because we all grow up on that stuff. No matter what your sport is now, like we all grew up on some wrestling, man. Yeah, and those guys had swag before swag was in style. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Alex Rodriguez. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for listening to these interviews and these conversations and for supporting the show. To get all those links, all those discount codes, I know they can be complicated. They're not all just slash Jordan, unfortunately.

Just hit the page at Jordanharbinger.com slash deals. We made it searchable. It works on your phone now. You can also search for any sponsor using the search box on the website as well. So please consider supporting those who support us. Now for the rest of my conversation with Alex Rodriguez. There have been times where you're on the field and thousands of people, maybe even tens of thousands, they're yelling at you, maybe they're booing.

There was an incident where they were throwing fake money down. I'm thinking that time in Seattle after you'd signed for Dallas, I think it was. How do you block that stuff out and perform? Or do you not bother blocking it out and you do something else? Are you using it somehow? You know, I think growing up and watching, you know, thousands of baseball games ever since I can remember and just being a fanatical about sports. And you look at Michael Jordan and Greg Norman and Magic and Bird, Pat Riley,

Tigerwood, all the great ones. They usually have one thing in common. And they had this incredible Zen approach that you just could not get inside their brain. You couldn't get in their skin. They wouldn't overreact. No matter how crazy things were, they were always a very common presence.

So that's something that I took very early on. I had a coach in high school by the name of Rich Hoffman, very much like John Wooden, you know, spent over 35 years at Westminster, put over 20 players in the major leagues, and he was always the same way. That's something that I've always wanted to do. Like, no matter what came around me, no matter how crazy things got,

I always wanted to be level-headed and very calm, kind of the calm before the storm. That seems really important, especially because I was reading the past media in prep for this, and it was like, the press was so hot and cold, as with a lot of celebrities and athletes. You know, one day you're loved

and the papers are fawning over you, and then the next day it's like a fraud, right, or two weeks a week later because the news cycle. And it seems like a lot of pressure that could lead to really bad choices, bad behavior. I would have a very hard time dealing with that sort of scrutiny and super high expectations because you actually can't win. They don't want you to win. They want you to hit the front page of the tabloids. I'm wondering if you're surprised that things didn't go off the rails maybe worse than

they did because you've taken a lot of flack and, public, but it seems like things could have been much worse. Yeah, look, I think you said it best. Like, you've seen a little bit of my history, and we've talked about it here in this past hours. Dad left when I was 10. I was drafted, you know, number one at 17. I have the largest contract in the history of the game at 24.

We did that again at 32. And along the way, there was a lot of ups, a lot of downs, a lot of uglies. What I got myself, I think, cut up in, you know, I started as Alex, Roger. is and somewhere along the way I lost my way and became Arod. And sometime after my suspension, I'm back to being Alex again. And I think that's something that we have to watch, right? When you have a young teenager that becomes, you know, you give him a million dollars and then someone earns a quarter of a billion dollars.

I just don't know what I would be able to tell myself at 21 to prepare me for that. Even with what I know now, I think there's just some embedded learning lessons that you're going to have. And I quite honestly, I wish I had a dad that would call me on my bullshit and, you know, slap me around a little bit and put me in shape, right? Like sometimes you need a little good kick in the butt from my dad if he was there. The only one that you'll listen to. Yeah. Probably, right? And I think that was interesting.

And it's important that I took myself a little bit, I would say a lot too seriously. At the end of the day, Jordan, you realize that you're just playing a game and you're one of the luckiest people in the world. and finally when I served my suspension towards the later, later days of my career, I had that whole year and I dove into therapy. I came clean. As a result, I got a lot of help turning the lens inward with Dr. David, who in many ways saved my life. And when I came out of that in the other side, and I didn't know if I would come out

in the other side, I understood that it wasn't that. serious and I introduced levity into my life. And pre-sus suspension, I thought about winning as big contracts and home runs and world championships. And post-sus suspension, it looked differently. It looked, you know, being a good teammate, being a good father, you know, being able to have a balanced life and having others around me win in a big way just as much as me. So when I look back at my suspension in my darkest hour. I think that while it was the toughest thing I went through in my life

and dad leaving at 10, I think that's going to be one of the greatest assets of my back nine of my life because it allows me to connect with people at a much higher, deeper level and the lessons learned through my incredible mistakes,

I'm able to share with the next generation, starting with my daughters, and hopefully if one or two people in the world can avoid the mistakes that I made by me talking to them, leading with my mistakes, then it was a process that was worth it. Yeah, I want to talk about the therapy in a second here, but I do wonder, I mean, having gone through all that therapy and building that self-awareness that only therapy can bring, do you think now that some of your patterns, say, with women come from your father or your experience or with your dad leaving and things like that?

Because I know, look, everyone knows you had this thing with like Madonna back in the day. And I wonder at the time were you like, oh man, I'm doing the same thing to my kids that my dad did to me, except in the spotlight? No, I think it's completely differently. I mean, I've never, ever for one minute, not been there for my kids, for my daughters. You know, my best friend in the world is Cynthia Rodriguez.

While she's married to a great guy, Angel, and they have a new baby girl that's four years old, Cammy, we all travel together. They come over in my house a couple times a month to have dinner with the seven, of us. Yeah, that's a, that's a crew. Yeah, it's a crew, right? And I love it. And we traveled together on the plane. We've been to Michigan twice to visit colleges for Natasha. Which, she's going to go to U of M? Going to go to Ann Arbor? That's one of her choices. That's one of her choices. She's looking at

that in Princeton, Yale, NYU. I mean, she has an econ kind of mind, but she also wants to do Broadway and drama. So Michigan and Yale have good programs there. Jordan, just to really clarify that. The one thing is I've never buckled once when it comes to being a father. My responsibility has always been on points of nothing like my father. Now, once I got divorced from Cindy, I was a single guy. Yeah, yeah. I'm able to do things and that's kosher. Yeah, that's funny you should use the word kosher. Because Madonna had that cabala thing and I was like, is Alex Rodriguez Jewish now? You know, like, I don't know. How's that word? I love all my friends. Look, from personal experience here being Jewish, not a bad move in the business.

you're in sports, showbiz, real estate. Listen, some of my most incredible friends are Jewish. They're the best people in the world. And you know what? One of the reasons why I bombed so well with the Jewish community is I see that familia first, right? And Latinos were the same way. One of the things that I've learned from a lot of,

I call them my rabbis, right, my mentors, is how wonderful they are with their families, how great husbands they are, fathers. They can be really tough in business, but, man, are they the greatest family people? And that's something that I've always admired. The Kabbalah has this thing where you wear like a piece of white, wool, dyed red, right? You know about this because I know you used to have one.

People say that's supposed to keep negative outside influence away from you. I assume you were worried about negative outside influence working its way inside your head at that point in your life. Yeah, look, again, I took things too seriously at one point. I really believe if you do the right things and you say what you do and do what you say, whether there's the red string or you want to take a bath in the ocean, I believe in kind of the third eye, protection of energy, protecting your family, you know, wishing others well and not being judgmental. I mean, what's great about Kabbalah is not really a religion.

It's really a philosophy. I grew up Christian and Catholic, very, you know, conservative background here in Miami, and I don't judge. I try to learn from everybody and move on. Speaking of moving on, right, you, unfortunately there's this like PED use that sort of lurks in every story that you look up about Alex Rodriguez. longest suspension, I think, in the MLB history, at least at the time, a full season. And so forgive the simplistic question. You get caught using, I guess, for people who don't

know what PEDs are, performance enhancing drugs, right? Steroids for lack, to keep it simple. Dumb question, of course, and simplistic, but how did that hit? You know, how do you begin to recover after you've let down fans, friends, family, your mother, your kids? Like, where do you begin in that process? Well, just to make it clear, a PED doesn't have to be a steroid. There's a larger category of things. There's a huge, huge window from A to Z, right? And that's a whole kind of science class. So, you know, again, I think somewhere along the way, I lost my way. One of the things that I found is that if you can't get out of bed and play, then stay in bed, right? There's no need to push. Ultimately, I learned a great

deal for my mistakes. And I've really learned the hard way that you're an average of the five people you surround yourself with. And part of being enough is that you don't have to overreach. And one of the most proud things of my career, through the good, the bad, and the ugly is that I had the best two years of my career of a 23-year major league career, my first year where I won a batting title at 1920, right, 1996, and I was a few points away from winning the MVP from Juan Gonzalez. And my last year, as a broken down 40, 41-year-old, where I led the team at home runs and helped the team get back into the playoffs. So whatever you want to say in the middle, the fact that as a skinny 19-20-year-old, I was really, really good, closing my career as a washed-up

40, 41-year-old. That cuts deep, man. I'm 42. Easy, buddy. Yeah, there you go. There you go. But I think those anchors, Jordan, at the end, are really, really important. Regardless of what happens in my career and where I end up, for me personally, that thing about being enough, you know, to be able to hit 33 home runs and lead the team back into the postseason as a 40, 41-year-old, there's something that I'm really proud. And then to be able to retire in front of, you know, the greatest fans in the world in New York

on August 12, 2016, in front of my mom, my daughters, and probably 100 friends and family. from around the world that came to see me and to walk off Yankee Stadium with all my highs and lows, I left as a world champion, I left with my head up, and I left with my daughters in my arms. Yeah, it's a healthy way to look at this, and it seems like Dr. David has helped you get there, right?

Because going from people chasing you to give you, what, $300 million or whatever, and then there's this scandal that you're like, you know, damn, you said in another interview, people wouldn't even return my emails and it was heartbreaking because I did it to myself. This may be ridiculous, but do you look back on that with any sort of gratitude? Like, did it bring you down to Earth at all?

And kind of, it shows you who you are and you get a chance to put the train back on the tracks. I wish it brought me back down to Earth. It took me like 7,500 feet under. I was in the Mariana trench somewhere. But it was dark, but you know what? I never forget the early days when we barely had enough money to pay the rent. I don't ever forget being suspended in my darkest hour, not getting emails returned. And, you know, today doing things when you wake up and doing the right things and not worrying

what is going to be portrayed to the media, but really focusing on surrounding yourself with the best people and making good decisions and staying in the middle of the field and everything that you do, you know, as you get older, you don't see the sidelines very well. So it's better to stay right down the middle of the field. Yeah. And it's just a great way for me to live. And I never forget, Every day I think about how it was in 14 in my dark hour when I couldn't get those emails returned. And it keeps me humble and it keeps me grounded. And I'm more grateful today than ever. And I'm having more fun today with my team here at Arod Corp and growing the company like we are.

And it's an exciting time. I feel grateful and also to create opportunities for young people that are going to create great wealth in our company. And through that, we're going to give back as we have in the community. where we've put over 40 kids through college at the University of Miami, first generation immigrants, and we've done a lot also with the Boys and Girls Club, and we'll continue to do so.

I know you did intensive 10-hour-a-day therapy. That sounds extremely difficult. Making you through an hour of therapy is a thing. Ten hours a day is, I don't know what's harder than that. Me neither. Yeah, okay. The reason. And we were than 10 hours,

we would show up around, we would start tea time in the couch in evergreen Colorado in a beautiful town in the middle of nowhere. We would tee off the therapy at 9 o'clock in the morning and go to 5 p.m. Okay, nearly eight hours then. With no lunch break, no lunch break.

And then my homework was to go walk to snow by myself for two hours and think and then write and journal. You know, this went on for a very, very long time. And again, going back to the suspension, If they gave me a slap on the wrist, and I was hoping that I got, you know, 50 or 60 games, and I didn't. I got the entire 162, as you said, the longest suspension of Major League Baseball history. And that became, the length of it became my greatest asset because I was able to go back

and really kind of rebuild the house from Ground Zero. I heard you say I was my own worst enemy. But it has to be, and I don't want to excuse anything, of course, and I know you wouldn't either, but it's got to be tough to find blind spots when you're that successful, especially that early in your life, because nobody wants to tell you anything that you don't want to hear. You're 100% right. The first time that Coach Hoffman told me that I was going to be the number one pick in another three years was as a 14-year-old when I was at Westminster Christian for the first day. And I looked behind me and I said, are you talking to me? I was pretty average my

freshman year, and I was just transferring to Westminster. But how does that you? you address those blind spots is by surrounding yourself with people that are going to be real with you. And it goes back to breakfast club with my girls. When Natasha or Ella say something that sounds a little slippery, we stop right there and we say, that just sounds like you're full of, you know what. Tell me again. And then they'll try maybe three or four times and we will not leave until it sounds solid. And then by the end, they'll say, okay, Daddy, you know, I really, I just screwed up. And I said, now put a period there. Now, that's what solid sounds like.

Not the three-minute explanation that you gave me that it was everybody's this or this and that. And the reason why I know that is because that was me. But I didn't have anybody to sit with me and say, you sound like you're full of shit. And early on, I didn't understand why people would say, well, he sounds like he's disingenuous. He's full of shit. It's because I was trying to say something that was appealing to everybody. And if you ask me the same question now, I say, Jordan, I just fuck. up. And I put a period and a story. And you become more believable and more genuine. And you're not

trying to please people. You're trying to please yourself and be yourself. Alex, thank you so much, man. I know this was not the easiest interview you ever done. I'm not famous for coaches pitch questions to beat up a baseball metaphor. And look, I appreciate your time and your candor here. Because you could have BS your way through this, speaking of BS, but you chose not to. And I think that's pretty admirable, man. much. Good questions. Good preparation. Thank you. I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before I get into that, here's a trailer from my interview with Leila Ali, daughter of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali. She's got a great story about how she ended up the only other boxer in her family and how she carries

her father's legacy. Whether you're into sports or not, I think you're really going to dig it. You have to have it in you to want to be a fighter. It's not something that you just go, I think I'll just try boxing, you know, because you're going to get your ass beat. If you get in you, when you get that opportunity, it was a brawl. I mean, it was bloody. It was like crazy. And I was like, I want to do that. You would think anyone punching you would hurt, right? Yeah, sure. But

as fighters, it's like, oh, that person can punch, that person can't. Tap, tap, tap, tap. And then every once in a while, that bam, that hard way, oh, okay, I felt that. If you're listening to your camp saying, she's nothing, and she this, and she that. And then you have to get your ass in there, and then you feel that punch. Like, no, she can punch. No, she's not just a pretty bad. You see me across that ring

looking at you, like, yeah, remember all that stuff you talk? Now it's about to happen. It's just me and you. Nobody else can get in there with you, you know, and it's like, I'm going to remind you of all the things you said, they didn't know that street side of me. Not everyone has that. You don't have to. Sure. But I do. Now you get to meet someone. You see how they walk. See how they hold this stuff. See if there's any fear in their eyes. What was your father's reaction to you wanting to box? He didn't like it. No? No. You guys were sparring before you even put the gloves on. Oh, yeah. He supported me, though. He came to a lot of my fights. He couldn't beat all of them. I could always see that glare in his

eyes of him being proud and just to come into that arena and having everyone chanting, Ali, Ali, and you just see him light up to see me in that ring and him just remembering himself. Our boxing styles were similar, the way I'm shaped, my body shaped. So just seeing all that had to be a super crazy experience for him. For more with Layla Ali, check out episode number 309 of the Jordan Harbinger show. Hey, as I said in the show opened, this conversation and Alex himself surprised me in a few ways. He is or was known for being good at misdirection, especially in press communications during the Yankee days. Frankly, I expected him to do a bit more of that, and he was really candid in a way I didn't expect in at least most of this interview.

I think it's probably a relief to finally be able to be yourself after so many years of putting on a front, and also to know that being yourself isn't going to lead you or your family down the wrong path. Big thanks once again to Alex Rodriguez. Links to all things we discussed will be in the show notes. Jordan Harbinger.com. Please use our website links if you buy books from any guests on the show. It does help support the show. Transcripts are in the show notes, videos up on YouTube, advertisers, deals, discount codes. They're all in one place, all in one searchable place at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Again, please consider supporting those who support this show.

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