Gum disease-stricken Alex Rodriguez gives Doug Mientkiewicz a response to chew on
When Doug Mientkiewicz ripped on his former high school and professional teammate Alex Rodriguez and said Rodriguez is going to "die a lonely man," he opened the door for a response and Rodriguez provided one Wednesday morning.
On FOX5's Good Day New York, the host asked Rodriguez about Mientkiewicz bashing him. Quick background: Mientkiewicz, the former Minnesota Twins first baseman who played baseball, basketball and football with Rodriguez in high school and spent the 2007 season as his teammate in New York, went on a podcast last week and let loose on Rodriguez.
"With you, you have people coming out of the woodwork from high school saying crazy things about you. How do you brush that off? How do you handle that?" FOX5's Rosanna Scotto said.
Rodriguez, who earlier in the segment revealed that he has gum disease, answered Scotto's question while mixing in a plug for the gum health company he works with.
“You have to work on all the positives," Rodriguez answered. "For me, I’m grateful to have this opportunity to work with FOX. I’m a father of two. I get to do a lot of great fun things. I get to partner up with OraPharma and talk about preventing gum disease. So, there’s always going to be people out there that have things to say, everyone has an opinion, but I certainly would never talk publicly negatively about any of my teammates, especially someone in high school."
That's Business 101 from A-Rod, who added a subtle poke at Mientkiewicz.
“I mean, look, we’re almost 50 now. This is supposed to be the good old days when we look back and we cringe about some of the weird things that we did and we’re proud of the relationships we built over the years. So you take that with a grain of salt and you wish everyone well and you move on."
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.