No one is safe from a rookie hazing, not even No. 1 overall pick in the 1993 MLB Draft and three-time AL MVP, Alex Rodriguez. A new Sports Illustrated profile on Ken Griffey Jr. reveals how he once told Rodriguez the Seattle Mariners were secretly auctioning off their sperm. At first, A-Rod didn't appear to take the bait, but with a little more coaxing, Junior nearly persuaded A-Rod to, er, come join their group.
The year before, he’d pulled a subtler prank on another teammate: Alex Rodriguez, then an 18-year-old rookie shortstop who, like Griffey, had been the top pick in the draft. Griffey enlisted Seattle’s trainer, Rick Griffin, to convince Rodriguez that the club’s stars—including [Jay] Buhner and Randy Johnson—were involved in a scheme to sell their sperm to the highest bidder, as if they were thoroughbred stallions, and that Rodriguez might himself attract an appreciable stud fee. He brought in a fake doctor. "Dude, you got great genes," Griffey told the rookie. The callow Rodriguez was skeptical at first. Then he started to come around. "How much money do you think we could make?" he asked. Griffey, mercifully, pulled the plug before donations were to be harvested. "Everybody has rookie hazing," he says. "That was his."
Even though A-Rod received a $1 million signing bonus when he joined the Mariners, he was still interested in trying to earn an extra couple bucks. We guess you can't knock the hustle. As for Griffey, he picked a good time to, um, pull out of the prank before things went way too far and got way too awkward.
Send all complaints, compliments, and tips to sportstips@complex.com.
