CenterStage: My Most Fascinating Interviews—from A-Rod to Jay-Z - Softcover

Kay, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1982152044 ISBN 13: 9781982152048

Verlag: Scribner, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

From the longtime host of the New York Yankees’ television broadcasts, ESPN Radio’s The Michael Kay Show, and YES Network’s Emmy Award–winning CenterStage comes an “entertaining…greatest-hits collection” (Kirkus Reviews) of his most memorable interviews with the most intriguing personalities in sports and entertainment—from Jay-Z to Mike Tyson to Serena Williams to Adam Sandler to Bon Jovi to Larry David.

Emmy Award–winning television announcer and interviewer Michael Kay’s eighteen years as host of YES Network’s CenterStage have given him access to many remarkable figures in sports and entertainment. Now, this absorbing selection of the best, most revealing—and often surprising—interviews is available in one amazing collection, including some of the behind-the-scenes stories that didn’t appear on camera. From Kay’s very first CenterStage interview in 2001 with quarterback Steve Young, the show’s creators knew they had something special. Kay’s ability to get celebrities and otherwise private personalities to open up and share candid insights has become his trademark.

Among the interviews featured in the book are those with Red Auerbach, Charles Barkley, Mike Tyson, Bobby Orr, Sly Stallone, Jay-Z, Lorne Michaels, Paul Simon, John McEnroe, Rob Reiner, Seth Meyers, Serena Williams, Alan Alda, David Halberstam, Larry David, Bob Costas, Billy Crystal, Lindsey Vonn, Chris Evert, and Quentin Tarantino.

For any pop culture fan or sports enthusiast, this prized collection “should be high on your reading list” (Alex Rodriguez, three-time American League MVP).

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Michael Kay was born in the Bronx and has lived the dream of being the New York Yankees announcer for the past thirty years—the first ten on radio and the last twenty with the YES Network. He’s also the host of one of the top-ranked radio shows in New York City, The Michael Kay Show on ESPN NY radio, as well as the Emmy Award–winning YES Network interview show CenterStage. Before he entered broadcasting, Michael was a writer with the New York Post and then the Daily News (New York). He lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, with his wife, television news anchor Jodi Applegate, and their two children. 

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1. A-Rod (2003) A-Rod
Alex Rodriguez was a member of the Texas Rangers when we interviewed him in August of 2003. Always savvy, Alex was well aware of the power of the YES Network, and I think he already had thoughts of being in the media postcareer. He quickly agreed to do the show when asked. To intimate that he foresaw eventually ending up with the Yankees the very next year would be false. How could he have known that Aaron Boone, then the Yankees’ third baseman, would tear up his knee in January of 2004 and clear a road from Texas to the Bronx that might have previously seemed impossible? After Boone’s injury, it was certainly convenient that the Rangers decided to get out from under Rodriguez’s record-breaking contract, which the player had signed three years prior, and that the Yankees were interested in bringing him over and asking him to shift his position from shortstop, where he was a Gold Glove winner, to third, just to the right of Derek Jeter. But that’s how it came down.

This interview is fascinating when you consider all that has taken place in the years since. No one knew that A-Rod would be embroiled in scandal after scandal, eventually serving a shocking full-season suspension for using performance-enhancing drugs. Try to read between the lines of this interview with the young A-Rod for clues of what was to come. When you read his answers, can you picture a man who had it all, lost it, and then ultimately grabbed a shot at redemption and engineered one of the great resurrections in sports history? Many years later I made A-Rod laugh when I dubbed him “Lazarod” for how insanely he’d risen from all of his missteps.

But at the time of this interview, he was the golden boy, putting together his third straight amazing season with the Rangers and making more money than any other pro athlete had ever earned. He had it all. Prodigious talent, matinee-idol good looks, and a glittery future that seemed certain to take him to the Hall of Fame.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Cooperstown: A-Rod’s incredibly bad judgment almost brought him down to a place from which it seemed impossible to get up.

Incredibly, the only bad judgment on Alex’s part back then was what he’d chosen to wear to the show. Although he knew of CenterStage, he likely didn’t realize that most every guest wore a suit and tie. Alex showed up in jeans and a T-shirt. All these years later he laughs at his sartorial choice.

Here is the conversation we had with A-Rod, an hour of mostly sunny optimism that preceded the nightmare his life eventually became. His answers from that day are illuminating when read through the prism of what was to come.
The Interview
MICHAEL KAY: Alex Rodriguez came from humble beginnings to sit atop the world of baseball. With the rare combination of size, speed, and power, the man they call A-Rod may be the greatest player who ever played the shortstop position. Alex achieved success early with the Seattle Mariners, playing in the shadow of Ken Griffey Jr. and Randy Johnson. But Alex persevered and emerged as a true star. As one of the youngest and most accomplished free agents in baseball, A-Rod signed the largest contract in sports history with the Texas Rangers, and that’s where he currently plies his trade. Talented, charitable—and well-dressed [laughter]—we welcome superstar shortstop Alex Rodriguez to CenterStage. [Applause]

ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Thank you.

MICHAEL KAY: I always feel a little awkward saying this, but Alex Rodriguez playing in Arlington, Texas, is like hanging the Mona Lisa in a garage. And that’s not knocking Texas. I like Texas. [Laughs] But it’s not New York, it’s not LA.

ALEX RODRIGUEZ: [Laughs] Well, Dallas is a big town, it’s a great town, I’m comfortable there. I love the heat. I love where I am. I love our neighborhood. And the only thing missing in Texas is winning. And I think that’s gonna come shortly. We have an incredible core of young players, as good as anyone, and I think we’ll win. We still have room for growth.

MICHAEL KAY: We’ll get back to that in a moment. Now, you were born in New York, and then you moved to the Dominican Republic. Is that where you learned how to play baseball?

ALEX RODRIGUEZ: I think I started here in New York early on. Ever since I was two or three years old I can remember my father having the Yankees games on and even the Mets. And my father had a baseball background. But when I was four, we moved down there, and I started playing with kids that were about two or three years older, so as a young man I was always overmatched.

MICHAEL KAY: At what age did you think, “I’m pretty good at this, I can make a living at this”?

ALEX RODRIGUEZ: It’s funny, because between the ages of twelve and fourteen [after his family moved to Miami] I quit baseball completely. I was a big NBA fan, I wanted to be the next Larry Bird or Michael Jordan. But then my mom bought an NBA roster, and she said, “Okay, pick out how many Dominican or Latino players you have in the roster.” So I looked for about twenty minutes and I found none. [Laughs] So then she pulled out a Major League Baseball roster and she says, “Now do the same.” And of course about thirty or thirty-five percent were Latinos, and she said, “Well, there’s your answer. You need to start playing baseball again.”

MICHAEL KAY: So she actually thought that you could be a professional baseball player?

ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Well, she thought because my father almost made it to the big leagues [when he played baseball in the Dominican Republic], she felt my talents were in baseball.

MICHAEL KAY: Now, when you were nine, your father left you. But your mom was the rock.

ALEX RODRIGUEZ: [Pauses, clears throat] She was a great role model. I remember her leaving for work at six in the morning and coming back at midnight, working hard to support me and my [half] brother and [half] sister. She was a secretary during the day and then she was a waitress at night. It was very tough. I would go right from school to the Boys and Girls Club and stay there until midnight until my mom could pick me up. It was tough, but the Boys and Girls Club was an incredible avenue for me, and that’s why I’m the spokesman for the Boys and Girls Club today.

MICHAEL KAY: Now, from what I hear, you were like a rail. Really skinny. But before you were a junior in high school, you started to lift weights, and eventually you could bench-press three hundred pounds.

ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, which benefited my baseball game. Because I got stronger. I got more confident. I started hitting the ball out of the park.

MICHAEL KAY: [With you as the star shortstop, your high school, Westminster Christian School, in Palmetto Bay, a suburb of Miami, wins the high school national championship, you bat .505 as a senior, you’re voted USA Baseball Junior Player of the Year, among other honors.] You’re the object of every scout’s desire, people are calling you the next Cal Ripken Jr. You’re in high school, and you’re signing autographs. How does a sixteen- and seventeen-year-old kid process all that?

ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Obviously it was an exciting time in my life. It was crazy. We had fifteen scouts just kind of hanging around, not in the locker room but the hallways. I just felt that was bizarre. But the most exciting time I’ve ever had in high school was when one of my teachers called me out of class and said, “Hey, Cal Ripken is on the phone in the coach’s office, he wants to talk to you.” And he was my all-time...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Scribner
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1982152044
• ISBN 13: 9781982152048
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande