Alex Rodriguez’s Media Presence
Ever since my early childhood, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez have been, and still are, my greatest idols but, if I had to describe Rodriguez’s MLB career in one word it would have to be “controversial”: 1st overall pick of the 1993 MLB draft, 3x AL MVP, 2009 World Champion, 4th all time in home-runs; steroid scandal, brawls at Fenway, sex scandal, divorce. Rodriguez was both a fan-favorite and the most hated Yankee throughout his career. Yet, his post-retirement presence and impact in the media is beyond controversy: he’s setting the gold-standard for a professional baseball player’s media presence.
Some might say Rodriguez’s relationship with Jennifer Lopez jump-started his presence in media but, while his relationship definitely helped him gain more popularity amongst a wider audience, Rodriguez’s career after baseball was already under way at that point. In 2017, a year after his retirement from professional baseball, Rodriguez made his presence known in Fox Sports’ broadcasting booth during the MLB postseason. Rodriguez also joined the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball crew for the 2018 season while still working with Fox Sports during the postseason. Sure, that’s great, but a lot of former players go on to work as analysts and commentators for the game. But Rodriguez didn’t stop there: he used his presence in the broadcasting booth to further his presence on multiple social media platforms.
On top of coming on as a guest for numerous TV shows and podcasts, Rodriguez also started hosting a podcast called “The Corp” as a joint venture between his own company (ARod Corp) and Barstool Sports. On “The Corp”, Rodriguez is joined by Barstool’s Dan Katz (better known as Big Cat), where they invite guests such as Gary Vaynerchuk (founder and owner of Vayner Media) and Michael Rubin (Executive chairman of Fanatics). For each podcast, Rodriguez picks the brains of these entrepreneurs and dives into their lives and business endeavors. He often discusses with the guests about how MLB can do things differently as a business. They dive into specific cases for each podcast, but it always comes down to one thing: MLB shouldn’t try to make their content exclusive for short-term gains, but rather put out all and any future the content they have on several social media platforms for long-term gains and an increased media presence.
Rodriguez has also started his own youtube channel, where he takes his fans through what he does on a regular day, what his workouts might look like, what he is doing with universities and business schools, and to share his personal thoughts about baseball and society in general.
Rodriguez’s second career as a content creator is leading the change in MLB’s media content creation and distribution. And it’s just the beginning of it. If more current and former players follow Rodriguez’s lead, baseball can become an even bigger experience.
