Alex Rodriguez, 50, who was famously busted twice for using steroids, admitted he isn’t going to make it into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The Today show’s Craig Melvin asked the former Major League Baseball star if his new HBO documentary series, Alex vs. A-Rod, is an attempt to join fellow greats, like Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, at Cooperstown.
“That’s totally fair. I would go the other way. Now that you saw [the series], I’m definitely not going in the Hall of Fame,” Rodriguez said in the Thursday interview. “I knew the rules, I broke the rules, and if that’s the penalty, that’s completely on me.”
Rodriguez, who became a World Series Champion with the New York Yankees in 2009, first used steroids from 2001 to 2003.
In 2009, he admitted to using the banned substance while on the Texas Rangers after Sports Illustrated reported he tested positive at the time in an anonymous survey. He previously denied using it.
Then, he was caught again using performance-enhancing drugs between 2010 and 2012 while on the Yankees, which he denied. The scandal, centered on former Miami clinic Biogenesis, involved several other major league players.
He received his first punishment for steroid-use in August 2013—a suspension for the entire 2014 season.
The former shortstop and third baseman is a 14-time All-Star, who ranks fifth in career home runs in the league’s history, and has numbers better than “90 percent” of Hall of Famers, according to Melvin.
But the series focuses on Rodriguez as being a self-described “recovering narcissist.”
“I’m still recovering,” he said. “I’ve been in therapy now for over 10 years, and it’s really saved my life.”
Rodriguez, who has been previously linked to Jennifer Lopez and Madonna, even had an ex-girlfriend claim he has a painting of himself as a centaur above his bed.
He has denied that this is true.
The series depicts how he joined the Seattle Mariners in 1994 at only 18 years old, then went on to sign a $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers in 2000—at the time the biggest contract in the league’s history.
“I think over time I kind of started losing my way a little bit, and then I felt like A-Rod took over,” he said.
Melvin asked Rodriguez if he deserved to be in the Hall of Fame, citing baseball legend Hank Aaron affirming to him that steroid users, such as Barry Bonds, deserve the accolade.
“Of course, of course,” Rodriguez said. “If you want to put an asterisk or something like that, of course, that’s not my decision to make.”
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