ESPN may re-work ‘Sunday Night Baseball,’ but A-Rod is safe

The person making this decision needs to be fired and his exact opposite needs to take his place.

Former New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez will be back on ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” next season, but the rest of the broadcast team could be different. ESPN is considering making changes in the broadcast booth next season, according to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post.

Alex Rodriguez got crushed for his bizarre take on even and odd leads

Alex Rodriguez was a great baseball player, even if he was juiced up for much of his career.

But he struggles as an announcer, which anyone who has watched even a little bit of a Sunday Night Baseball broadcast can attest too.

If ESPN is not forcing a wacky appearance by his girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, then A-Rod can often be found rambling on and on and on and not always making sense.

That happened during Sunday night’s Mets-Phillies game when he suggested the Phillies drop a sacrifice bunt to get a runner to third because it could help the team eventually get a two-run lead.

Clearly, he’s been taking J. Geils Band albums to heart.

A-Rod’s valuables taken from car after S.F. game

“ESPN baseball analyst Alex Rodriguez was among a group of people who had valuables stolen from an SUV Sunday night in San Francisco.”

Shame. 

But ...

$500,000 worth of jewelry and other items?  Who keeps those kind of goodies in their vehicle? 

Still, a shame.

Half-million in loot stolen from A-Rod’s car in San Francisco, sources say

A thief smashed into baseball legend Alex “A-Rod” Rodriguez’s rental car Sunday night in San Francisco, making off with an estimated half-million dollars worth of jewelry and electronics, sources familiar with the investigation told The Chronicle.

Rodriguez was in town broadcasting the Giants and Philadelphia Phillies game for ESPN and he left his car on the 400 block of Brannan Street, about three blocks from Oracle Park, sources said.

Sometime between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m., someone broke into a car in that location and stole a camera, a laptop, miscellaneous jewelry and a bag, said Officer Adam Lobsinger, a San Francisco police spokesman. Lobsinger said the burglary involved a private citizen and it’s against department policy to release victim information.

But numerous sources told The Chronicle the victim was Rodriguez and the thieves pilfered roughly $500,000 worth of goods.

Jennifer Lopez Surprised Alex Rodriguez With A Birthday Cake, But He Didn’t Eat It

Alex Rodriguez was in his usual spot in the Sunday Night Baseball booth for Yankees-Red Sox when he was surprised by fiancée Jennifer Lopez and his two daughters. Saturday was his 44th birthday, and they had brought him a cake. The baked good itself was ... understated.

Perhaps A-Rod had been all caked out from earlier in the weekend. During her concert on Friday, J-Lo had brought out a big-ass fancy cake, with Rodriguez’s first name spelled out in crystals, and had everyone sing “Happy Birthday” to him. The big-ass fancy cake made a second appearance at an afterparty, this time with sparklers. It would’ve been tough for ESPN’s production crew to compete with that custom dessert, but the sheet cake they got for his on-air surprise didn’t even have his name on it. It seems that someone made a last-minute run to Market Basket.

As told from the chain of tweets from baseball writers who were at Sunday’s game, Rodriguez didn’t actually eat any of the nameless cake. Some scavenging reporters picked at it, however. That’s one of the perks of this business—sometimes, you get to eat some food a famous person didn’t deem fit to put in their body. The Boston Globe’s Pete Abraham saw it when it was untouched

Should we have told her that he would prefer a few carrots and a lump of sugar?

The Transformation of Alex Rodriguez (SI)

This January, Rodriguez spent two weeks as a guest speaker in lecturer Allison Kluger’s class on strategic pivoting and reputation management at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. “From crisis comes a decisive moment,” says Kluger. “You can make the moment work for you, or you can crawl into a hole and wait for something else to come. Alex didn’t wait.”

Rodriguez did SoulCycle with the class’s 25 students, and ordered them all a Chipotle dinner (although, as a health nut, he didn’t himself eat a burrito). The highlight of the course, most agreed, was when he narrated his own crisis, though he didn’t get into exactly what substances he ingested or injected, or when or why; he’s never done that, publicly. Even so, all 25 course evaluations offered raves. “Alex’s superpower is his storytelling,” wrote one student. “He was able to engage and connect with every student.”