Alex Rodriguez

Rodriguez is ranked first in career Wins Above Replacement for shortstops of the modern era (post–1901).

Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez (born July 27, 1975), nicknamed "A-Rod", is an American former professional baseball shortstop and third baseman, businessman and philanthropist.

Rodriguez was born in 1975 in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan to Dominican immigrants Víctor Manuel Rodríguez Marcano and Lourdes Nelly Navarro Melo from San Juan, Dominican Republic.

He was raised alongside his two half-siblings, Joe and Suzy, from his mother's first marriage.

In 1979, when he was four years old, the family moved to the Dominican Republic, then to Miami, Florida, when he was in the fourth grade.

His father played baseball for a team in the Dominican Republic and introduced him to the sport as a child.

Growing up, Rodriguez's favorite baseball players were Keith Hernandez, Dale Murphy, and Cal Ripken Jr.., and his favorite team was the New York Mets.

At the end of Alex's freshman year at Christopher Columbus High School in Miami, he transferred to Westminster Christian School, where he was a star shortstop on the baseball team and played quarterback on the football team.

In 100 games he batted .419 with 90 stolen bases.

Westminster won the high school national championship in his junior year.

He was first team prep All-American as a senior, hitting .505 with nine home runs, 36 runs batted in (RBIs), and 35 stolen bases in 35 attempts in 33 games.

He was selected as the USA Baseball Junior Player of the Year and as Gatorade's national baseball student-athlete of the year.

The Mariners selected Rodriguez first overall in the 1993 MLB draft, and he debuted in the major leagues the following year at the age of 18.

Rodriguez played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Seattle Mariners (1994–2000), Texas Rangers (2001–2003), and New York Yankees (2004–2013, 2015–2016).

Rodriguez is the chairman and chief executive officer of A-Rod Corp as well as the chairman of Presidente beer.

He is part owner of the National Basketball Association's Minnesota Timberwolves.

Rodriguez began his professional baseball career as one of the sport's most highly touted prospects, and is considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time.

With a career .295 batting average, Rodriguez amassed over 600 home runs (696), over 2,000 runs batted in (RBI), over 2,000 runs scored, over 3,000 hits, and over 300 stolen bases, the only player in MLB history to achieve all of those feats.

He was also a 14-time All-Star, winning three American League (AL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) Awards, 10 Silver Slugger Awards, and two Gold Glove Awards.

Rodriguez is also the career record holder for grand slams.

He twice broke the record for the largest sports contract ever signed.

In 1996, he became the Mariners' starting shortstop, won the major league batting title, and finished second in voting for the AL MVP Award.

His combination of power, speed, and defense made him a cornerstone of the franchise, but he left the team via free agency after the 2000 season to join the Rangers.

The 10-year, $252 million contract he signed was the richest in baseball history at the time.

He also admitted using banned performance-enhancing drugs from 2001 to 2003 and was consequently suspended for the entire 2014 season.

He played at a high level in his three years with Texas, highlighted by his first AL MVP Award win in 2003, but the team failed to make the playoffs during his tenure.

Before the 2004 season, Rodriguez was traded to the Yankees, for whom he converted to a third baseman to accommodate their shortstop Derek Jeter.

He was named AL MVP in 2005 and 2007.

He opted out of his contract after the 2007 season, then signed a new 10-year, $275 million deal with the Yankees, breaking his own record for the sport's most lucrative contract.

He became the youngest player to hit 500 home runs, reaching the milestone in 2007.

Despite denying in a 2007 interview that he had ever used performance-enhancing drugs, Rodriguez admitted in 2009 to having used steroids, saying he used them from 2001 to 2003 when playing for the Rangers due to "an enormous amount of pressure" to perform.

He helped the Yankees win the 2009 World Series over the Philadelphia Phillies, which was Rodriguez's only championship title.

Toward the end of his career, he was hampered by hip and knee injuries, which caused him to become exclusively a designated hitter.

While recovering from a hip injury in 2013, Rodriguez made headlines by feuding with team management over his rehabilitation and for having allegedly obtained performance-enhancing drugs as part of the Biogenesis baseball scandal.

In August 2013, MLB announced a 211-game suspension for Rodriguez for his involvement in the scandal.

After an arbitration hearing, the suspension was reduced to 162 games, which kept him off the field for the entire 2014 season.

After retiring as a player, Rodriguez became a media personality, serving as a broadcaster for Fox Sports 1, a cast member of Shark Tank and a member of the ABC News network.

He played his final game in professional baseball on August 12, 2016.

In January 2017, CNBC announced Rodriguez would be the host of the show Back In The Game, where he would help former athletes make a comeback in their personal lives; the first episode debuted on the network in March 2018.

In January 2018, ESPN announced that Rodriguez would be joining the broadcast team of Sunday Night Baseball.