Alex Rodriguez's Off The Field Behavior Confirms What We Suspected All Along

Alex Rodriguez is arguably one of the most divisive players in the history of Major League Baseball. He's both revered and "reviled," as Sports Illustrated described him in 2016, and his legacy is certainly a complicated one. He ended his career with 696 home runs — a feat that earned him a spot right behind the legendary Babe Ruth as one of baseball's all-time greatest home run hitters. But Rodriguez's accomplishments were marred by his use of steroids, which earned him a season-long suspension in 2014.

So, was Rodriguez taking the easy way out, or was he so desperate to please everyone and prove himself that he was willing to cheat to stay in the game? After all, this is the guy who underwent a risky second surgical procedure on his hip in the hopes that it would improve his game, per ESPN, and he was determined to make a comeback after closing the most shameful chapter in his career. However, no matter what A-Rod did, there would always be haters.

"For the most part, the people that don't know me well, they're going to mainly lean in on my tough days because that's really what got a lot of the headlines, and I don't blame them," Rodriguez told The Athletic in November (via archive.today). "It's really up to me to show them who I am today." So, who is the retired ballplayer today? Well, he's taken his relentless drive to succeed to a totally different industry.

According to the New York Post, Alex Rodriguez once said that former New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon was his "real estate idol," as Wilpon is one of the co-founders of the real estate group Sterling Equities. According to Celebrity Net Worth, he's worth a whopping $800 million, more than twice as much as A-Rod. However, it's not the business mogul, but a "Real Housewives" alum, who's helping Rodriguez hit it out of the park in the real estate industry.

Rumors of a possible romance between Rodriguez and Kelly Bensimon have swirled in recent weeks, but "The Real Housewives of New York" star told Us Weekly that their relationship is strictly of the professional variety. "We're working together and it's great," Kelly said. "I never gave [Alex] tips on real estate. I mean, we just have a lot of investments and opportunities that we're both interested in." Per TMZ, Rodriguez turned a $800,000 profit on one of his properties in Miami and set a sales record for the area, so who can blame Kelly for wanting to work with him?

Rodriguez never went to college, but he was so determined to make it big in the business world that he attended marketing classes at the University of Miami. His drive has clearly served him well — he has founded his own real estate company, A-Rod Corp, which boasts Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry as one of its top investors (via archive.today).