Julio Rodriguez fashionable star at All-Star derby party. A-Rod predicts bold M’s move
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2023 All-Star Game in Seattle
Seattle’s T-Mobile Park is the focus of the baseball world this week as MLB’s top players gather for the 2023 All-Star Game. The TNT sports staff brings you all the action.
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Julio Rodriguez has this superstar thing locked down.
The Mariners All-Star — no, megastar — outfielder enjoyed a featured entrance at the T-Mobile MLB All-Star Derby After Dark party at Seattle’s Showbox SoDo. Fashionably, he arrived after his team’s owner, John Stanton, and manager Scott Servais showed up, though within his expected time following his wowing performance at the Home Run Derby hours earlier.
Rodriguez arrived about an hour after former Mariner and retired star Alex Rodriguez made his entrance, plus a bold Mariners prediction, on T-Mobile’s “magenta carpet” outside the concert venue.
Seattle’s glittering J-Rod arrived solo just before 11 p.m. He was the star attraction at the wireless phone company’s annual event the night before the All-Star Game.
He was wearing a Fort Knox-amount of gold. He was also in a silk, patterned, Louis Vitton, washed-denim shirt (retail cost: $1,440).
Four hours earlier up 1st Avenue South, Rodriguez had sent a packed T-Mobile Park, site of Tuesday’s 93rd MLB All-Star Game, into a roaring party of its own. He blasted 41 home runs in the first round of the Home Run Derby, setting a record for the event Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr. eventually won Monday.
Now, Rodriguez was entering a party that was waiting for him. Nelly wasn’t about to take the Showbox stage without Julio Rodriguez inside to watch him perform.
All this — the home run derby, the after party, this All-Star week in Seattle — was featuring him.
“It’s definitely unbelievable,” the 22-year-old from Loma de Cabrera, Dominican Republic, told The News Tribune at the Showbox late Monday night. “It’s really unbelievable to have such good players and good stars out here (in Seattle). I hope they are enjoying it.”
Yes, Rodriguez said, the last year for him has been a blur. The burst into superstardom this time last year as a rookie center fielder for a Mariners team that hadn’t been to the playoffs since Ichiro Suzuki was a rookie outfielder in Seattle; that was 2021. A massive contract extension with the Mariners that could net Rodriguez up to $470 million. Rodriguez leading the M’s to their first playoff series in 21 years last fall.
Now this, including pink buses with Rodriguez’s giant picture on the sides of them taking All-Star fans around Seattle during baseball’s showcase week.
“It’s definitely been a lot,” Rodriguez said. “It’s definitely been a lot.
“A lot of good things have been coming out way. A lot of good parties here. A lot of good things that we’ve been doing for people.
“I feel really lucky, and blessed, that I get the opportunities that I get.”
Alex Rodriguez: Mariners to the World Series
About an hour after the man of this Seattle and national baseball week stepped onto the carpet, Alex Rodriguez and his date arrived at the Showbox party.
Alex Rodriguez is now 47. He is seven seasons removed from when he last played, for the New York Yankees. He has been an MLB commentator for Fox Sports and ESPN the last six years he’s been out of the game.
He says Julio Rodriguez is his favorite player, the one who attracts the young, hip people to baseball that the sport desperately seeks to capture.
“I’m in awe,” Alex Rodriguez said on the carpet about Julio.
“He’s J-Rod. I’m A-Rod. A little nepotism there.”
Alex Rodriguez is still widely vilified around Seattle for taking the Texas Rangers’ $252 million in 2000, the largest contract in MLB history at the time, and leaving the Mariners. Most fans feel he abandoned Seattle and the team that drafted him first overall in 1993 out of high school in Miami. He made his debut for the Mariners a year later at the age of 18.
A moment before he walked down the carpet outside the Showbox, a T-Mobile staffer announced to the assembled media Alex Rodriguez was arriving.
“Who?” a 30-something man with a closely-cropped beard asked from beside the carpet.
“I love being back in Seattle,” Rodriguez said upon his arrival. “My career started here when I was 17 years old. It’s truly one of my favorite cities in the world.
“It’s funny. Now that I’m in my 40s, I wish I could have appreciated all the beauty of this city at 18 like I do now.
“It’s great to be back. And I can’t say enough about the job that the Mariners have done, not only in this community but in all of baseball. One of the most storied and respected franchises.”
A fan in a Mariners jersey, who may have had a few cups by this point in the night, was walking past along 1st Avenue South.
“You made the right decision, A-Rod! Don’t listen to them!” the man shouted at Rodriguez.
The retired slugger looked up, smiled and pointed at the man.
“Thank you,” Rodriguez said, still smiling. “My friend!”
A reporter from Yahoo! Entertainment asked Rodriguez for a prediction on this year’s World Series winner.
“My prediction is the Seattle Mariners will trade for (Angels pending free-agent superstar) Shohei Ohtani,” Rodriguez said of the player whose future is the other dominant story of this All-Star week, besides Julio Rodriguez.”
Rodriguez assessed the Mariners have enough top minor-league prospects stockpiled to get the Angels to deal Ohtani before the MLB trade deadline Aug. 1 rather than lose him in free agency for perhaps $600 million or more this winter.
“Ohtani and J-Rod on the Mariners? That’s a match made in heaven,” Rodriguez said. “With Ohtani, they would have enough to win the World Series.”
Nelly makes it hot in there
With J-Rod and A-Rod finally inside, Nelly got on stage near midnight.
Wearing a Cardinals cap for his hometown of St. Louis, the rap performer and headliner of four acts Monday night at the Showbox said he was hoping his friend Mookie Betts from the Los Angeles Dodgers had won the Homer Run Derby.
Nelly (born in 1974 as Cornell Iral Haynes Jr.) had the patrons and VIPs bopping and cell phones recording to “Ride Wit Me” plus “Hot in Herre, Country Grammar” and others, including covers of country songs such as “Over and Over,” on which he collaborated with Tim McGraw in 2004.
Over the booming bass Nelly bellowed, more than once: “I appreciate you, Seattle!”
Servais, the Mariners’ 56-year-old manager and a coach on manager Dusty Baker’s American League staff for Tuesday’s All-Star Game, was long gone by then.
Servais and his wife Jill left just after 10:30.
Yes, there and gone before his superstar center fielder even arrived.
This story was originally published July 11, 2023 at 10:20 AM with the headline "Julio Rodriguez fashionable star at All-Star derby party. A-Rod predicts bold M’s move."
