Alex Rodriguez announced his retirement yesterday, effective this coming Friday. It wasn’t a huge surprise, as he’s been so awful this season that the Yankees were going to cut him anyway.
A-Rod said that he didn’t want to leave the game now, but the Yankees offered him a role as, “an ambassador, instructor and special advisor to the team.” So basically, he chose the retirement plan over being released outright.
He’ll still get the rest of his $20 million salary this season, and the $20 million he’s owed for next season. Over the course of A-Rod’s 22-year career, he made around $435 million from baseball.
A-Rod put up some monster numbers in his career, including 3,114 hits and 696 home runs. And he’s the only player to ever have 13 consecutive seasons with at least 30 home runs and 100 runs batted in.
But he definitely wasn’t the most beloved player of all time. There were several scandals, including him lying about using performance enhancing drugs. Then, he admitted that he did in the past before it was outlawed. Oh, and then there was the time that he was caught in the Biogenesis human growth hormone raid after that.
Yesterday, A-Rod said, “This is a tough day. I love this game, and I love this team. And today, I’m saying goodbye to both.” There will surely be some fanfare for his final game on Friday.
