Fellow ESPN analyst rips former Yankees’ star Alex Rodriguez

Alex Rodriguez, the former New York Yankees‘ third baseman in the 2000s and 2010s, recently made the news after it was reported that he was interested in buying the New York Mets. After his attempt didn’t come to fruition, he made the headlines last weekend for another reason.

Over the weekend, he said that players should accept the MLB owners’ proposal currently on the table, which includes splitting revenues 50-50 for games played in empty stadiums. Both sides are still negotiating a return to action some time in the summer.

According to ESPN Radio host Dan Le Batard, quoted by the New York Post, players should be upset after hearing A-Rod’s comments. Rodriguez made approximately $450 million in a 22-year career, which included steroids use. He played several years with the New York Yankees.

“I’d be really mad at A-Rod,” Le Batard said this week on his show. “You made a whole lot of money not playing the game clean, and then at the end what you’re trying to do, while failing to buy the Mets with J-Lo, is you’re talking like ownership instead of labor.”

Le Batard says that he knows Rodriguez for a long time and he has a “better understanding” about how his mindset is. Both men work for the same chain these days: ESPN, where A-Rod is an analyst in “Sunday Night Baseball.”

“I can imagine players being furious hearing him”

“The reason it wasn’t surprising to me is — and I’ve known A-Rod since high school — I’ve never met an athlete of his kind of excellence who was more of a zealot about wanting to be liked, who craved being liked,” he said. “The irony of that is that most people found him to be insincere or some sort of antiseptic polished version of what you want your athletes to be, always trying to be something that you liked instead of whatever the authentic thing was inside of there. And it is so much easier to get the applause of people — fans — with that sentiment, even if it means alienating your peers. Even if it means alienating the union that got you all that money because it’s so strong and there’s no salary cap in your sport.”

“He was willing to discard whatever it is that the players might feel about him advocating for a pay cut, after having made all of his money,” Le Batard said of Rodriguez. “And so I wasn’t surprised that that’s the route that he went, but I can imagine players being all kinds of furious hearing him.”

The former 2009 World Series Champion with the Yankees said last week about the subject: “If there’s $100 in the pie, like the NBA, players take $50, owners take $50,” the 10-time Silver Slugger Award winner said. “And we give it to the fans. We thank the fans of baseball. It is the people’s comfort food and people are starving, I just don’t want to see this great game — people fighting, billionaires fighting with millionaires. This is actually when the owners and players are aligned, and we want the same thing. We want to save baseball. We want to play baseball.”

Le Batard wasn’t impressed.

“What he did,” he said, “was cupping a hand to his ear, and just waiting for the applause to roll in on social media because he decided to say: ‘Hey players, let’s go. We’ve made enough money. Get out there. America needs you.’”