A-Rod Paradise

Four years after being in baseball purgatory, Alex Rodriguez is finding redemption as one of the sport’s most respected analysts, with a batter’s eye for smart business deals. Add a high-profile relationship with Jennifer Lopez and A-Rod is back on the A-List. 

- Zack O'Malley Greenburg

EVEN AS ALEX RODRIGUEZ SITS CONTEMPLATING a platter of raspberries at the Four Seasons in Austin, he is chasing something. The day before, in preparation for his new gig as an ESPN Sunday Night Baseball analyst, he visited three teams at spring training in Arizona. Today in Texas, he gave a keynote address at South by Southwest titled “Baseball, Business and Redemption” with CNBC chairman Mark Hoffman. And later he’ll jet home to Miami to spend time with his two daughters before heading to Tampa to see the Yankees in his role as special advisor.

It’s all rather remarkable, considering how recently something was chasing him—namely, the specter of performance-enhancing-drug use, which cost him the 2014 season and stamped an asterisk on the career of one of the most gifted baseball players of all time.

“I’m totally grateful for where I am today and do not take anything for granted,” the 42-year-old Rodriguez says. “And I felt that once I owned all of that and started digging myself out of this black hole, I wanted to come out a different person.”

What Rodriguez is chasing these days is redemption—and in the wake of his 2016 retirement, he’s finding it by analyzing baseball and business. He debuted as a commentator for Fox last year before adding the ESPN job, remarkably coexisting with rival networks. Rodriguez also oversees A-Rod Corp, which includes real estate investments (13,000 units across ten states), conditioning companies (from UFC-branded gyms to TruFusion, a kettle-bells-and-hot-yoga outlet) and startups (with stakes in Josh Kushner’s health insurance company, Oscar, as well as the ride sharing service Didi and the eSports team NRG). He’s even made savvy moves with his own real estate, selling his Miami Beach mansion for $30 million in 2013 (double what he paid) before building his dream home in Coral Gables.