On Opening Day last season, New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez hit a two-run home run to help cement the team's first win of the season. Five days later, he hit a game-winning grand slam in the bottom of the ninth inning against the Baltimore Orioles, and less than two weeks after that, he won yet another game with a walk-off moon shot. By the end of the month, Rodriguez had hit 14 home runs, a new American League record for April. He didn't ease up for the rest of the year, carrying the struggling Yankees on his back for weeks at a time. When the dust cleared, the man universally known as A-Rod had put together what was arguably the best season of his career. Even another anemic playoff performance — he went 4 for 15 in New York's four-game loss to the Cleveland Indians in the opening round — did little to mar his accomplishments.

Rodriguez's 2007 season shouldn't have come as a surprise. After 13 years in the majors, he is an 11-time All-Star who, at one time or another, has led the league in most offensive categories. At the end of the 2007 season, the 32-year-old Rodriguez had hit more home runs, amassed more total bases, and scored more runs than any other player his age ever. But during his first three years in New York, A-Rod — the $25-million-a-year man with a reputation for disappearing in the clutch — seemed to drag the Yankees down as often as he picked them up. It wasn't until last year that he finally proved his worth and, in doing so, won the affection of the most storied baseball town in the country.

Then, just after 11:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time on October 28, Fox sportscaster Joe Buck informed the 21 million or so Americans watching Game 4 of the 2007 World Series that there was "big news brewing": Rodriguez, the owner of the richest individual deal in team-sports history, had exercised a provision in his contract that allowed him to opt out of the last three years of his deal with the Yankees in order to see what he could get on the open market.

In an instant, all that hard-won goodwill was destroyed. A New York Post columnist wrote that if this "final dash out the side door" were, in fact, the end of the slugger's stint in Yankee pinstripes, it would be "part of a perfect A-Rod opera, a me-first symphony that would be appalling if it weren't so predictable." Bob DuPuy, the president of Major League Baseball, said the mid-game announcement had "showed significant disregard for the core principle that baseball is a team game and not an individual sport."

Once again, Rodriguez had become radioactive — which is, in fact, exactly how one New York sportswriter described him to me. When I got in touch with a spokesman for the Yankees, I was told that he'd be unable to arrange a single interview concerning Rodriguez with anyone associated with the team. After several conversations and without any explanation, a personal friend of the superstar's stopped returning my calls. Many of the friends, journalists, players, and baseball executives who would speak insisted that their comments be off the record.