Earlier this year, baseball sensation Alex Rodriguez became the youngest player in 10 years to earn a major league roster spot.
Just 20 days short of his 19th birthday, Alex was called up from Double-A ball on July 7 to play shortstop for the Seattle Mariners.
The previous August, the M’s had signed Alex to a three-year, $1.3 million contract, but had planned on calling him up much later in the ’94 season. But Manager Lou Piniella (the name as published has been corrected in this text) hoped Alex’s defensive play would help the sagging M’s.
Think it sounds cool to play in the majors? Alex says sometimes it is and sometimes he’d just like to be a normal guy.
“It’s exciting and what I’ve wanted to do all my life,” he says. “But every once in a while, the teen-age part of me comes out and says, ‘I wish I was at the beach,’ or ‘I wish I could hang with my friends.’ “
Alex says his teammates have gone out of the way to make him feel welcome. Especially superstar Ken Griffey Jr., whose locker is right next to his. “He’s given me lots of good advice.”
Other teammates have used pranks to make him feel like one of the guys. “We were on a chartered flight where we checked our coats with the stewardess,” recalls Alex. “Afterwards, my coat was missing. It showed up mysteriously in my locker about a week later.”
Alex says the hardest thing about playing in the majors is learning to lose. When he joined the Mariners, the team was 12 games under .500. “I’m used to winning,” Alex says. “I’m never going to accept it, but I have to learn to adjust to the fact.”
From the time he was 8 years old, Alex says, he was good enough to play ball with older kids: “I never got to the level, though, where I could dominate, because they were always a little bit bigger and stronger,” he says. But that all chan-ged in high school: “Because of my early experiences, it all turned around. And suddenly I was the best.”
Alex struggled during 17 games with the M’s, batting .204 with no home runs and 2 RBIs. In early August he was sent down to Triple-A to finish out the season.
But he’ll be back to the big show next spring – it’s in his contract. And even if it wasn’t, his personal drive would probably assure him a spot on a major league team somewhere: “I’ve always gotten where I wanted to go. I want to be the best so bad, it’s scary.”
