The accusations that Rodriguez didn't care about winning and that he was ruining baseball ate at the sensitive superstar, especially since Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter didn't face any such criticism when he signed his own $189-million deal to stay in New York for another 10 years. Ever since they broke into baseball, the press had tied Jeter and Rodriguez together — they were the golden boys, destined to define the game for years to come. The fact that they were close friends who spoke on the phone a couple of times a week only cemented the connection.

But that December, during an interview with Esquire's Scott Raab, A-Rod finally snapped. Why was it, he asked rhetorically, that reporters lionized Jeter? "He's never had to lead... You go into New York...you never say, 'Don't let Derek beat you.'" Those sentences wrecked the two stars' friendship and solidified Rodriguez's reputation as a prima donna. What was ignored at the time — and has been all but forgotten since — is that Boras, who was present at the interview, had egged A-Rod on by reminding him of how many more home runs he'd had than either Jeter or Boston's Nomar Garciaparra, the third shortstop in what was then a kind of holy trinity.

Rodriguez was devastated by the article, but he never made any excuses, never claimed that he had been misquoted, never protested that he had lauded Jeter countless times during that same interview. And Boras, who'd made $12.6 million off of A-Rod's contract, never stepped in to take any of the heat.