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Alex Rodriguez has made over $315M in his baseball career to this point. For most people, that would be enough money to last a lifetime. Rodriguez, who has lost money to some bad real-estate investments and other ventures, needs to collect as much of it before he is no longer able to bring in any resemblance of a salary.
With an impending suspension that will likely suspend him for the rest of the 2013 season and all of the 2014 season, the Yankees third baseman is ready to leave the game of baseball with a caveat. He wants to collect the rest of the cash guaranteed on his contract according to a report from Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports.
In this case, he wants to salvage as much as he can of the $100 million or so remaining on his contract with the New York Yankees before Major League Baseball disciplines him for using performance-enhancing drugs, lying about it and a litany of other offenses. That – not this cockamamie burning desire to come back and play baseball – is the grand imperative of his haggling sessions with MLB, two associates of Rodriguez's told Yahoo! Sports. He wants to take his money, he wants to screw the Yankees because he feels like they ditched him and he wants to become a property mogul, buying and selling, wheeling and dealing, away from the sport that turned on him despite everything he did for it.
MLB commissioner Bud Selig has threatened Rodriguez with a lifetime ban if he does not cooperate with MLB's investigation. That would mean that Rodriguez would not see any of the money that is left on his massive contract with the Yankees. Although Rodriguez will appeal any suspension that he receives from MLB, he does not want any chance of losing the money that is left on his contract.
According to Passan, Rodriguez has 72 hours left to make the choice on whether to fight the ban or surrender.