Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter have gone from teenage buddies to teammates for the most famous baseball team in the world to cohosts on television. Their relationship, good and bad, was one of the biggest MLB stories of the past two decades.
This week, Rodriguez cleared the air on the ups and downs the two have faced together.
Most recently in their long history, the two World Series champions circled one another in bids to own the Miami Marlins until Jeter won out in 2017. But when Jeter’s ESPN documentary The Captain aired in 2022, Jeter invited Rodriguez out for drinks in South Florida to reconnect.
The conversation helped Rodriguez realize all the good between the two and move on from the bad.
“In that 30-plus-year history, we’ve had some ups and we’ve had some downs,” he told Dan Le Batard on South Beach Sessions. “The media was obsessed with our relationship in New York. It was a very meaty story, and negativity sells, and big names sell.”
Rodriguez believes if it had not been the Yankees or New York City, any perceived issues between him and Jeter would not have been amplified much at all. He believes the intensity of that coverage harmed the connection between them.
“It was a mega media story,” Rodriguez said. “And he did a nice job of being super disciplined. I wasn’t as disciplined, and it created some noise. Through it all, what I remember is what a great player he was, good teammate. We won a championship together, and now we’re teammates at Fox doing the playoffs and World Series every year.”
Rodriguez quickly changed the subject to his overall experience doing television, clearly a little overwhelmed discussing Jeter.
But Rodriguez certainly seems to have some regrets about his relationship with Jeter and hopes to repair it during this latest chapter.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.