Yankees To Hold News Conference With Alex Rodriguez

Rodriguez will be unconditionally released on Friday and become a special adviser for the Yankees next season, working with minor leaguers.

“It’s been very painful, embarrassing and painful for me”, he said of seeing his playing time diminish dramatically over the past two weeks.

Rodriguez said he asked for the opportunity to play one more game. “I never thought I could play for 22 years”.

A-Rod was famously suspended for the entire 2014 season after admitting to taking performance-enhancing drugs.

“I want to be remembered as someone who is madly in love with the game of baseball… and hopefully as someone who tripped and fell a lot but kept getting up”. “We all want to keep playing forever, but it doesn’t work that way”.

Rodriguez’s career earnings will be over $400 million, and his huge deal that he signed with Texas before the 2001 season was so rich the Rangers arranged a trade with the Yankees after four seasons to rid itself of the onerous contract.

Under the terms of the agreement, Rodriguez will remain on the Yankees’ roster until Friday and will play in one more Yankee Stadium game, that night against the Tampa Bay Rays.

On Sunday, Rodriguez said he’s “been to hell and back”. He came back a year ago and hit 33 home runs before tailing off late in the season. Rodriguez now has 696 homers in his career and it would be remarkable if he reaches 700 this season.

Rodriguez returned from hip surgery and played while appealing the suspension, and the following January an arbitrator cut the penalty to all of the 2014 season. He will make all the money he was owed as a player, $20 million next season.

A-Rod made a successful return previous year, when the Yankees made him a fulltime DH, but his offense slid late in the season and hit.224 from September 1 on. His average rose to.267 with two homers and 13 RBIs in June before dropping.

Rodriguez, 41, still has a year left on a 10-year, $252.87 million contract. When the Rangers made a decision to trade him, a proposed deal to Boston fell through before the trade to NY. He agreed to shift from shortstop to third base with the Yankees, who already had Derek Jeter at shortstop.

Upon arriving to Yankee Stadium on Sunday morning, rows of reserved seats were set up in the press conference room the bowels of the building. Rodriguez will continue on in a role as a special advisor to the team and an instructor through December 31, 2017.

The two met face-to-face a few times, and A-Rod said he asked for one more chance to play in front of the Yankee Stadium crowd.