NEW YORK – Major League Baseball had this message for Alex Rodriguez and agent Scott Boras: Shame on you.
Boras announced during Game 4 of the World Series on Sunday night that A-Rod was opting out of the final three seasons of his contract with the New York Yankees. The timing left baseball officials livid.
“We were very disappointed that Scott Boras would try to upstage our premier baseball event of the season with his announcement,” Bob DuPuy, baseball’s chief operating officer, said yesterday in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
“There was no reason to make an announcement last night other than to try to put his selfish interests and that of one individual player above the overall good of the game,” DuPuy said. “Last night and today belong to the Boston Red Sox, who should be celebrated for their achievement, and to the Colorado Rockies, who made such an unbelievable run to the World Series.”
Red Sox fans sure took notice fast. After their team won the title for the second time in four seasons, they stood behind the visitors’ dugout at Coors Field and chanted: “Don’t sign A-Rod!”
“Kind of strange timing,” Red Sox president Larry Lucchino said after Boston completed its sweep of Colorado.
New York, which failed to make the World Series in all of Rodriguez’s seasons, maintained yesterday that it will not attempt to re-sign A-Rod now that he has opted out.
“No chance,” Hank Steinbrenner, a son of owner George Steinbrenner, said yesterday at Legends Field. “Not if it’s made official.”
Hank Steinbrenner did not make much of Boras’ timing.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “But I’m sure there’s a lot of people that aren’t very happy about it. Other baseball people, the commissioner’s office, the Red Sox.”
Hank Steinbrenner said the team left messages with Rodriguez, and “we really wanted to meet with him.”
“We wanted him to stay a Yankee. We wanted to let him know how much we wanted him,” he said. “The bottom line is … do we really want anybody that really doesn’t want to be a Yankee? How the heck can you do that? Compare him with [Derek] Jeter. Jeter, since he was a little kid, all he ever wanted to do was play shortstop for the Yankees. That’s what we want.”
