Learning Day: Alex Rodriguez's Children's Book

Hi! I’d like to show you a children's book called "Out Of The Ballpark."

It’s written by Alex Rodriguez.

It is also a gateway to the unnerving, alienating inhumanity of its author.

If you know who the author is, that claim makes some sense. Alex Rodriguez is weird. He’s off-putting. And this autobiographical children’s book is my favorite document of that. It’s one of the most uncanny, anodyne children’s books I’ve ever come across. It reads like Alex Rodriguez is an alien wearing a Human Costume. And I know that sounds extreme. But if that was his whole deal, it would explain this mirror-kiss picture he once had taken, on purpose, for a national magazine.

Some of you don’t know who Alex Rodriguez is. He’s that fella(s) up there. He’s that Self-Love Gemini Man. He’s that cover art for a theoretical Guns ‘n Roses album called Use Your Illusion Eww. And speaking of being sad with the strength of two men, Alex Rodriguez is WORLD FAMOUS in two ways. He’s a hard-charging business weirdo, and he’s a jilted J-Lo-Beau.

Before combining those embarrassments, Alex Rodriguez was a baseball player. He was also…even more off-putting?

No one liked the baseball player known as “A-Rod.” And I think that motivated him to write this children’s book. As of its publication date (early 2007), Alex Rodriguez was a two-time MVP, a ten-time All-Star, and the only person in baseball history to hit 400 home runs before his 30th birthday. I quoted that last achievement verbatim from Alex Rodriguez’s children’s book. He put it in the back of the book jacket and the front of the book jacket.

This book is also secretly two nationwide brags. Because they did two printings. I got a hardcover copy of the book (published 2007) from our local library. When I googled its details online, I discovered this paperback second printing, cranked out in 2012. And I have to assume they reprinted it just to do this update for the Hittin’ Dongs Boast.

That is the sweatiest imaginable behavior – and I don’t mean that in an Athletic Exertion sense. Michael Jordan did not spend Space Jam turning to the camera and listing his scoring titles. Pele did not spend his New York disco era shouting “BY THE WAY I AM THE SOCCER GREAT PELE” at passing taxi cabs. And even if he had, we would’ve cheered him on. We fall all over ourselves to like top athletes…and we still hated Alex Rodriguez. Because Alex Rodriguez combined three separate bummers into an unprecedented bummer-palooza. Those bummers:

1. Steroids. More on this later. Most importantly: this was not a well-known thing about him until after the children’s book came out.

2. Wealth. Alex Rodriguez got the largest contract in baseball history, by earning it. Then he tore it up to sign an even bigger contract, because he earned that too. Adjusted for inflation and market, he might still be the highest-paid baseball player. Everyone was mad about this at the time, and griped about A-Rod earning more than the Tampa Bay team's entire roster. (Everyone was wrong to gripe about this and is slowly learning why.)

3. He’s weird. He’s so weird! Every A-Rod story has terminally borked vibes. His voice makes baseball worse. He thinks sports fans wish sports was a stock market. He once did an interview where he complimented his new fiancée, Literally Jennifer Lopez, by calling her an “octopus threat.” His previous romantic partner’s mom publicly called him non-intellectual – and if you read the interview, it feels like she picked “not intellectual” as a kind alternative to “such a creepy friggin’ android, we considered turning him off and on again.”

Hell, Alex Rodriguez welcomes being called the nickname “a rod”. That phrase does not read in the heroic Simpsons way. Whenever I say “A-Rod” I feel like I’m getting away with calling him a “tool”, in the rhythm of “a sphincter says what.” I hate it. It’s yucky. I want his whole concept erased from my brain. The peak was 2009, when somebody claimed A-Rod did his casual sex-ing beneath multiple paintings of himself as a centaur. While that’s absolutely a lie, it’s also a thought. A thought matching the exact feeling of seeing, hearing, or knowing about Alex Rodriguez.

Editor's Note: Schmidtty, there's no way I'm finding art to illustrate this part of the artic-- wait, never mind.

And again: this children’s book pre-dates the big steroid stories. Purely on the basis of earning money (a good thing) and achieving ineffable yuckitude (a non-crime), Alex Rodriguez spent the peak of his career writing a “please like me” picture book. And I think the damage control begins with its calculated, alienating cover.

Why does that child have a doll’s face? And why is that doll’s face also kind of Alex Rodriguez’s adult face, at that time? Did A-Rod insist on this? Did he command his publisher to launch a psy-op, in the form of an Anti-The Irishman, to make America treat him with the kindness we offer children? Because that cover art is an outlier. The rest of the pictures in this book are stellar. They’re each a hand-illustrated painting by artist Frank Morrison. Frank Morrison painted the hell out of this psy-op. Also he seems great in general. Bonus fun: I keep misreading Frank Morrison’s name as “Grant Morrison”. So I had a fun brain-lark imagining “Alex Rodriguez-Grant Morrison collab.”

Anyway, on with the story. There is approximately this much story:

That’s the first actual page of this beautiful, pointless book. Author Alex Rodriguez wastes Artist Not-Grant Morrison’s genius on propaganda. It’s a story about a Child Alex who makes errors in a baseball game, and then practices a lot. At one point he calls his friend on the phone, to make him practice with him, while eating an apple straight into the phone.

As you can see, Alex must master both baseball and MATH. Here is how he conquers those challenges: one random line of text says Alex “aced a test that he had studied hard for.” Then he hits a game-winning grand slam and the story ends.

What a story. I’ve seen better plots on bus bench ads. I’ve seen richer characters at SovietPosters.com. And that’s bonkers if you know anything about Alex Rodriguez! In real life, A-Rod is the son of Dominican immigrants. They moved from New York City back to the D.R. and then to Miami. At one point his father abandoned the family, later reconnecting with Adult Rodriguez. And Alex explores his own rich, interesting, human story by… occasionally sticking his mom in the background.

Anyway the story ends…but the book is only beginning. The next page is a personal letter, written by Alex Rodriguez Using The Handwriting Font, concluding with the warm salutation “Work hard”.

As you can see, that letter also does a D.A.R.E. Program. Alex Rodriguez makes sure to emphasize that he has always “stayed away from drugs.” This book is from 2007. In 2006, Alex Rodriguez tested positive for a performance-enhancing stimulant. In 2009, he admitted taking steroids as early as 2001. And when this book’s braggy reprint hit stores, in 2012, Rodriguez was in the midst of having his new steroids practitioner make house calls.

Within two years of that reprint, A-Rod would lie about his new steroid use, receive the largest suspension in the history of baseball, belatedly admit his steroid use, and keep lingering on the New York Yankees roster in a failed effort to out-homer the other steroid guy. So…yeah. One volume of public relations children’s spam did not convince millions of baseball fans to stop shouting "You were the Chosen One".

Anyway that context supercharges this book. It’s why I can’t stop thinking about it. “Out Of The Ballpark” is a generational athlete writing a children’s book, about himself, to prop up his image, because his image was in the toilet before it deserved to be. He popped open Microsoft Word to tell his own story, Norman Fakewell-style. And we’re sitting here in The Future, so jacked up on dramatic irony our pupils are dilating.

P.S. – Alex Rodriguez recently bought an NBA team and is basically an oligarch now. Therefore this blog is not mean.

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