Alex Rodriguez believes that an infamous Esquire article published in 2001 when Rodriguez was a member of the Texas Rangers strained his relationship with former best friend and future teammate Derek Jeter “for years,” though it was not Rodriguez’s intention to insult him.
“That Esquire article, I thought it was pretty vanilla,” Rodriguez admitted in episode 2 of HBO’s Alex vs. ARod, which premiered Thursday, November 13. “I complimented the whole team and they took that and ran with it. That put a strain in our relationship for years.”
In the article, Rodriguez spoke glowingly about Jeter’s Yankees teammates — but in a way that seemed to disparage the Yankees icon.
“Jeter’s been blessed with great talent around him,” he said. “So he’s never had to lead. He doesn’t have to, he can just go and play and have fun, and hit second. I mean, you know, hitting second is totally different than hitting third or fourth in a lineup because you go into New York trying to stop Bernie [Williams] and [Paul] O’Neill and everybody. You never say, ‘Don’t let Derek beat you.’ That’s never your concern.”
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Jeter, 51, admitted in the 2022 ESPN docuseries The Captain that the talk around the article frustrated him.
“As a friend, I’m loyal,” he said. “I just looked at it as, ‘I wouldn’t have done it.’ And then it was the media. The constant hammer to the nail. They just kept hammering it in. It just became noise, which frustrated me. Just constant noise.”
That noise grew louder when the Rangers traded Rodriguez to the Yankees shortly before the 2004 season.
“People made such a big deal out of, How are they going to get along?’” Jeter explained in Alex vs. ARod. “That was a story before the opening press conference. My job was to limit distractions. I knew stories could snowball and I tried to cut it off.”
Jeter added that his focus, as a four-time World Series champion at the time, was to keep winning. He believed that if Rodriguez could help deliver the Yankees another championship, then “we don’t have to go to dinner every night.”
It didn’t help that Rodriguez, who moved to third base to accommodate the shortstop Jeter, struggled in the field to start.
Early in their first season as teammates, miscommunication led to Rodriguez and Jeter letting a pop fly drop between them. For fans and New York’s talking heads, it showed that their personal drama had spilled over onto the field.
“Out of all the stories that are out there about me and Alex, people made such a big deal out of a dropped pop-up,” Jeter remembered. “‘See, they don’t like each other? They dropped a pop-up.’ But one thing Alex always hated was pop-ups.”
Laughing, Rodriguez confirmed that he would rather take a line drive or sharp ground ball than catch a pop-up.
Rodriguez eventually adjusted to his position and the two went on to play together for a decade, winning the 2009 World Series together.
The first two episodes of Alex vs. ARod are streaming now on HBO Max.