When Doug Mientkiewicz ripped on his former high school and professional teammate Alex Rodriguez and said Rodriguez is going to “die a lonely man,” he opened the door for a response and Rodriguez provided one Wednesday morning.
On FOX5’s Good Day New York, the host asked Rodriguez about Mientkiewicz bashing him. Quick background: Mientkiewicz, the former Minnesota Twins first baseman who played baseball, basketball and football with Rodriguez in high school and spent the 2007 season as his teammate in New York, went on a podcast last week and let loose on Rodriguez.
“With you, you have people coming out of the woodwork from high school saying crazy things about you. How do you brush that off? How do you handle that?” FOX5’s Rosanna Scotto said.
Rodriguez, who earlier in the segment revealed that he has gum disease, answered Scotto’s question while mixing in a plug for the gum health company he works with.
“You have to work on all the positives,” Rodriguez answered. “For me, I’m grateful to have this opportunity to work with FOX. I’m a father of two. I get to do a lot of great fun things. I get to partner up with OraPharma and talk about preventing gum disease. So, there’s always going to be people out there that have things to say, everyone has an opinion, but I certainly would never talk publicly negatively about any of my teammates, especially someone in high school.”
That’s Business 101 from A-Rod, who added a subtle poke at Mientkiewicz.
“I mean, look, we’re almost 50 now. This is supposed to be the good old days when we look back and we cringe about some of the weird things that we did and we’re proud of the relationships we built over the years. So you take that with a grain of salt and you wish everyone well and you move on.”
