A-Rod the Slum Lord?

The New York Times has a fascinating, in-depth look at the real estate empire and charities run by Alex Rodriguez. Not surprisingly, for a guy so focused on money, he has a reputation of being stingy (even heartless) and inept. To wit: A-Rod owns 16 apartment complexes around the nation, 6 in the Tampa area- and the Times took a look at one of those, the Newport Riverside apartments in Tampa.

Some residents here tell tales of roaches overtaking kitchen cabinets in a bumper-to-bumper crawl to the corn flakes, of carpets stained in the 1990s and quick-trigger evictions.

“My mom comes here and she ain’t no rich person, but she thinks I live in the projects,” said Miguel Ruiz as he sat on the second-floor landing of Building 2-A on a recent Sunday afternoon. “She’s scared to come over here, for real.”

As Ruiz spoke, he pulled a boy named Elijah from a gap in the railing that opened when yet another piece of the banister rattled loose and fell to the ground.

“See, stuff like that, with kids around, it’s messed up here,” Ruiz said, adding, “Honestly, I was raised in a ghetto and I was brought up a little better than this.”

The Times then delves into A-Rod’s charitable giving history, and the fascination he has with money- and centering his identity around getting as much as he can. His donations seem to center around very public vanity gifts– the kind that put his name on baseball fields at the University of Miami, not the kind that put money back into the neediest segments of the community.

Money is A-Rod’s identity, engraving his social standing…

Rodriguez has earned nearly $200 million over the past decade, but, according to 990 tax records dating to 1998, he is a cheap tipper to his foundation.

In eight years of available documents, donations averaged $30,000 a year and gifts distributed to the community averaged $13,000 a year. In 2002, A-Rod did not contribute more than $5,500. In 2006, the foundation did not give away more than $5,090 despite a fund-raiser that collected $368,000.

Compared to other athletes making the kind of money he does- even his own teammates, like Derek Jeter, A-Rod comes up more than a bit short:

He isn’t on the platinum level of athlete donors. Tiger Woods has seeded his foundation with millions. And he isn’t on par with his teammates. Derek Jeter may have his I.R.S. issues, but he has given a total of $2 million to his Turn 2 Foundation since 1998.

It’s an interesting read, to say the least.

Hat tip to Yanks Fan/Sox Fan.