Mariners fans' grudge against Alex Rodriguez is a relic from a bygone era

For the first time in more than a quarter century, Alex Rodriguez will be on the field at T-Mobile Park as a good guy this weekend. There won't be any boos. There won't be any faux $100,000 bills. Just him among the other Seattle Mariners greats present to celebrate the franchise's 50th season, standing there and smiling as cheers rain down.

At least, this is how we imagine A-Rod's moment back in the Seattle sun playing out on Saturday. Even stone silence would be a step up from his customary reception at T-Mobile Park. Whether he was visiting as a Texas Ranger or as a New York Yankee between 2001 and 2016, the boo birds always came out.

“I’ve been getting booed there for 27 years, so I kind of had lost hope that this story would come full circle,” Rodriguez told Brock and Salk of Seattle Sports earlier this week, as part of the big reveal of his comeback.

Though the reasons for A-Rod's villainy transformed and compounded over the years, everyone knows where he and Mariners fans originally went wrong. As all good stories do, it has a basic structure and a moral arc. He was the Mariners' golden boy in the 1990s. And then, like Anakin Skywalker turning into Darth Vader, there came a day when he was corrupted.

However, that part of story hits different today. In part because times have changed. In part because the story itself is a bunch of malarkey.

Alex Rodriguez left the Mariners because he got an offer nobody in their right mind would refuse

It has been long enough since A-Rod's Mariners heyday that a little scene-setting feels appropriate, so here goes in the form of a timeline:

• 1993: No. 1 pick in MLB Draft
• 1994: MLB debut at 18 years old
• 1996: All-Star and batting champion at 20 years old
• 1998: 40-40 season at 22 years old
• 2000: Franchise record 10.4 rWAR at 24 years old

It was a truly generational run for Rodriguez in Seattle. And by the time it was over, he had amassed 38.1 rWAR before turning 25. Only he, Mike Trout, Ty Cobb and Mickey Mantle had ever done that, and only one of them had the chance to test the free-agent market afterward.

And so, that's how Rodriguez's 10-year, $252 million contract with the Rangers came to be. And since $1 in January of 2001 was worth $1.90 in June of 2026, that deal is worth close to $500 million in today's dollars. Nobody says no to that kind of money.

And yet, Mariners fans weren't just heartbroken. The prevailing sentiment was more like outrage, and the fan who appears at the 1:20 mark in this clip summed up the popular reason why. Apparently, A-Rod had said at one point that his ultimate fate wasn't about the money.

But did Rodriguez ever actually say that? There seems to be no evidence of it, whereas there's ample evidence that it was about the money. He was a Scott Boras client, for crying out loud. And when the Rangers introduced him, Rodriguez even explicitly said choosing them was a "financial decision."

The Mariners never came close to the Rangers' offer. After the 1999 season, they were said to have offered him an eight-year contract worth $15 million per year. As a free agent, they apparently extended a five-year offer at $17 million per year.

It's impossible to know how many fans bought into the "It wasn't about the money" narrative. Yet what's for sure is that the sentiment was very much of its time. There used to be a thing called "selling out," and it was a big no-no in those days. This was also when memories of the 1994-95 strike were still fresh and, yes, still painful.

The general consensus was that the players were to blame for the strike. They didn't want to accept a salary cap, and they were therefore the greedy ones. Apparently, nobody noticed the cognitive dissonance of calling a small group of millionaires greedy when their fight was with an even smaller group of multi-millionaires and billionaires.

Times have changed since Alex Rodriguez became the bad guy for getting paid

Today, things just feel different.

Sure, polls show that MLB fans actually support the adoption of a salary cap in the next collective bargaining agreement. But the vibe is that this is less about player greed and a lot more about the very real payroll imbalance in MLB. It's about hating the game, not the player.

Shohei Ohtani offers the clearest possible example of how times have changed since A-Rod was vilified for leaving Seattle. When he accepted the Los Angeles Dodgers' 10-year, $700 million offer in 2023, Los Angeles Angels fans didn't blame him. They indeed cheered him when he returned to Angel Stadium for the first time.

While the Dodgers obviously played something resembling a villain in the story, the real bad guy was Angels owner Arte Moreno. He had a chance to match the Dodgers' offer for Ohtani, and he didn't take it. Apparently, he thought Ohtani's real value was in the $400 million range. Two years later, Ohtani is a two-time World Series champion and Angels fans want Moreno gone.

Granted, the case of Juan Soto is proof that stories like A-Rod's haven't totally gone away. Since his departure from the New York Yankees to the New York Mets came down to $5 million and suite, it's fair game for Yankees fans to put a pox on both houses: the Yankees' for not matching the Mets' offer, and Soto's for choosing a few extra bucks over the chance to become a legend for baseball's most storied franchise.

But if, in some alternative universe, A-Rod had left the Mariners after 2025 instead of after 2000, you have to think the reaction among Seattle fans would be more akin to the one in Anaheim after Ohtani left the Angels.

Nobody cares about selling out anymore, probably for reasons that Babe Ruth was onto a century ago when he rightfully declared that "A man ought to get what he can earn." And if a team gets outbid on a player, it's either because his new team was simply too rich or because his old team was either too broke or too stupid.

It's a shame that A-Rod didn't get to leave the Mariners in this environment. Because of all the things that he actually deserves to have held against him, taking the money is not one of them.

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