All A-Rod All The Time

Sporting News, The, June 28, 1999 by Michael Knisley

TSN takes you inside the off-field life of Alex Rodriguez, one of baseball's best young talents

"Man, I'm dying of depression here," says Alex Rodriguez, but he doesn't really need to give voice to his gloom. His body language says enough. He's 90 minutes into a two-hour visit to Seattle Children's Hospital, and his broad, 2 3-year-old shoulders are sagging. His walk is slow. His eyes, normally a striking green with a tint of yellow, are glazed and gray.

Rodriguez isn't very good at this.

To be fair, the hospital asks a lot of its celebrity visitor. He has already seen crash victims, cystic fibrosis patients, a high-school athlete who took a javelin in the head, a 17-year-old with lymphatic syndrome who can barely talk but whose cough raises, goosebumps, and a 19-year-old whose double lung transplant has morphed into diabetes anti kidney failure thanks to the post-transplant anti-rejection drugs. "The kidney, like, ate all my muscles," she tells him.

Rodriguez, who isn't gregarious even in the happiest of circumstances, doesn't say much in these first 90 minutes. Fortunately, he doesn't have to. To the kids, it's enough that he has come, that he's here. It doesn't matter that he isn't doing 10 minutes of stand-up comedy in every room.

In Seattle, they know who he is, which is all that counts. They know he's A-Rod, the light of the city's sporting life. The Pacific Northwest connects with him in ways that don't require his words of encouragement. If he just sits quietly in a hospital room and signs his children's book, Hit A Grand Slam, and offers a gentle, "Enjoy the book, and get well," then it's enough to make a difference in a day. There are pictures and autographs for everyone, and memories are made all around.

It's the first morning of our five days with Rodriguez, who became baseball's first 40-40 infielder (40 home runs and 40 stolen bases) last year and only the third player to do it from any position (joining Jose Canseco and Barry Bonds). Although a knee injury that cost him five weeks on the disabled list in April and May will keep him from repeating his 40-40 in '99, he is on his way to another brilliant season.

Rodriguez is arguably the game's best young talent, if not the best player, period, right now. Poll baseball insiders about the first player they'd take to start a team, and Rodriguez gets mentioned at least as often as his Seattle teammate, Ken Griffey Jr., or any of the game's other stars. But as a chatty, cheer-'em-up envoy to the sick and infirm ... well, Rodriguez is a late-round draft choice, at best

"I don't like hospitals," he says later over lunch at Piatti, an upscale Italian restaurant near the University of Washington. "I feel very uncomfortable doing that. I usually let somebody from my foundation (Grand Slam for Kids) handle that sort of thing. I mean, I'll do anything for them. I'll call 'em on the phone. I'll send them flowers. I'll sign things. I just don't like going there."

Right now, he's 90 minutes into uncomfortable, and the worst is yet to come. For whatever reason, the hospital wants his last stop to be the inpatient psychiatric unit. Megan Keister, the special-projects coordinator who has been leading these tours twice a week for the past three years, has never taken anyone in here before. But today, the unit's doctors and nurses have requested Alex's presence, so there is some anxiety from the administrative staff. The kids in the hall are unpredictable, many of them suffering from extreme emotional or mental instability.

Mostly, these last 30 minutes go well. The kids even provide a few of the visit's lighter moments.

"Do you drive a Hummer?" asks one.

"A-Rod, can you mention us on TV?' asks another.

"You're Alex Rodriguez? I thought he was," says a third child as he points to Doug Taliaferro, a 5-8 goodwill ambassador for the hospital whose waistline, while not immense, is a pretty clear indication that his best playing days are behind him.

But as Rodriguez prepares to leave, one little boy loses it. He screams and runs and doesn't stop, and Rodriguez and the rest of us are told to stay where we are until he can be controlled. For five torturous minutes, we listen to him shriek. Rodriguez is stunned, as are all of us who don't deal with this on a daily basis. He leans against a wall for support, arms hugged across his chest, and starts asking questions: What's wrong with him? What can be done? Did l cause this?

The views out the windows are the best in Seattle. To the west, across the bright blue of Puget Sound, are the snow-peaked mountains of Olympic National Parle To the south, through the city skyline, are the Kingdome and the Mariners' soon-to-open new ballpark, Safeco Field. To the north, the Space Needle.

Rodriguez has the apartment furnished in early yuppie. OK, upper-end early yuppie. Leather couch in the living room. Stereo. Small computer desk with a big CPU and monitor. A large bookcase holding, among others, George Will's Men At Work, Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Anicka Rodman's Worse Than He Says He Is (White Girls Don't Bounce).