Free A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez by Selena Roberts Page A

got the client.”
    Boras didn’t come to Alex bearing gifts. One agent had taken Alex to Hooters, where he tried to entice the young star with an equipment bag full of goodies: balls, bats and gloves. It was insulting to Alex. Boras promised a more cunning inducement: a job at his agency for Susy. “Boras got to her,” says Hofman. “That’s really the key.”
    Seattle Mariners scout Roger Jongewaard had devoured all the video of Alex and had no doubt he was seeing something special. He’d sold his impressions to the highest levels of the organization. “We knew what Roger believed, and he was very convincing,” recalls Woody Woodward, the general manager of the Mariners in the
1990s. “We knew Alex had potential to be unlike anything we’d seen before.” Jongewaard’s scouting report from May 10, 1993, makes that clear. Under physical maturity, he wrote: “Similar to Jeter only bigger and better.” Under player strengths: “Better at 17 now than all the superstars in baseball were when they were seniors in H.S.” Under player weaknesses: “Tends to jump at the ball.” Under additional comments: “Generates a special feeling when watching him play. Premium prospect with potential to be an impact player. . . . [Darren] Dreifort would be good pick but Rodriguez is better!”
    Rodriguez had already stated his interest in joining the Mariners as the number one pick, but Boras was at work well behind the scenes, advising the family from afar. He couldn’t be directly involved because that would jeopardize Alex’s amateur status— and eliminate the threat that he might play for Miami rather than go pro. After being coached by Boras, Alex called Jongewaard at his Seattle offi ce on the morning before the draft. With his assistant in the offi ce and the phone on speaker, Jongewaard heard Alex speaking in a way he never recalled before. His voice sounded odd, weirdly rushed. “It was like he was reading from a piece of paper,”
    Jongewaard recalls.
    “Roger,” Alex told Jongewaard. “Please don’t draft me. I want to go to a National League team, and Seattle is too far away, and I don’t want you guys to draft me.”
    “Alex,” Jongewaard said, “it’s too late. We already have your number and we plan on drafting you.”
    “Uh,” Alex said, having to put his script down and improvise.
    “Bye.”
    Jongewaard wasn’t stunned by the bizarre conversation. Alex wasn’t the endearing kid from Kendall in that moment but something manufactured. “I fi gured it was probably a Boras thing, where they would try to get him to a bigger-market team,” Jongewaard says. “So I was somewhat expecting that.”
He was right. Boras had begun his famous game of cat and mouse with teams vying for his clients. He was an expert at creating divisiveness from unity, at gaining emotional separation from club and player so he could work the cold numbers of a contract.
    Boras capitalized on Alex’s need for someone— particularly a male fi gure close to him— to defi ne his identity for him. Boras liked to grind teams up for every dollar, so Alex was sure to be a holdout.
    The Mariners knew what they were up against but made the call, anyway. A few minutes into the 1993 draft, around 1 p.m., the phone at the Arteaga home rang. This was where Alex wanted to be on draft day: where his memories of Mr. Arteaga were fresh, where his best friend J.D. lived, where his family could surround him . . . and with local TV cameras on hand to record it all. There were more than a hundred people packed into the family room and kitchen. It was a festive atmosphere with cupcakes on the table and a family cruise to the Bahamas planned for later that week. Alex had gone on a shopping binge with his mother. “We bought $1,000
    worth of suits,” Alex told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel .
    Where had Alex gotten that kind of money? Or had he just fudged the number? Anything was possible with Alex. On draft day, he wore a denim