It almost got very ugly between Alex Rodriguez and Dan Patrick.
During a recent appearance on “Pardon My Take,” the radio host revealed that a spat between Patrick and Rodriguez once nearly came to blows when the Yankees’ third baseman saw him in a locker room.
“Alex Rodriguez criticizing Derek Jeter’s contract when he was on my show … He thought he was off the air with me, but he was criticizing Derek Jeter. Now, I don’t even know that he’s mad at me. We do the interview, and then, this is a couple years later, we’re in Dallas,” Patrick remembered.
“I said to my guys, we should reach out and see if A-Rod wants to join us on the show. Called the PR guy, then he calls back and says, ‘Alex has a problem with you.’ I go, ‘OK, well just come over to the locker room.'”
Patrick said Rodriguez made him wait around 15 minutes before speaking to him, and then he promptly began berating him.
“I thought he was going to punch me, because he started yelling at me. I said, ‘Alex, it was on the record. You know it was on the record.’ I had [former MLB pitcher] Rob Dibble with me at the time, I said, ‘If he hits me,’ he goes, ‘I got your back. I’ll take him out.’
“That got close to go-time, I think, for Alex,” Patrick said.
The rift between the Yankees’ two superstars has a lengthy and well-documented history.
Rodriguez and Jeter were great friends before an infamous Esquire magazine profile that quoted A-Rod diminishing Jeter’s greatness threw a wrench into the bromance.
Another Rodriguez interview — with Patrick — let Jeter know he couldn’t trust his onetime friend, the Yankees’ shortstop revealed in the ESPN documentary “The Captain.”
“In my mind, he got his contract, so you’re trying to diminish what I’m doing, maybe to justify why you got paid. When you talk about statistics, mine never compared to Alex’s. I’m not blind. I understand that. But, we won! You can say whatever you want about me as a player. That’s fine,” Jeter said.
“But then it goes back to the trust, the loyalty. This is how the guy feels. He’s not a true friend, is how I felt. Because I wouldn’t do it to a friend.”