Rodriguez says nobody really knows him

“It was actor Edward James Olmos, portraying Abraham Quintanilla in the biopic “Selena,” who spoke of how hard it was to please the masses as a Mexican American _ you have to be more American than the Americans and more Mexican than the Mexicans, both at the same time. “It’s exhausting,” an exasperated Olmos exclaimed.

Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez, the New York Yankees’ $252-million third baseman and reigning American League MVP, is an American-born Latino of Dominican descent who was born in New York City, spent time as a child in the Dominican Republic and grew up in Miami. He seemingly walks with ease on both sides of the literal and figurative border as the Golden Boy of the major leagues, the Oscar De La Hoya of beisbol.

Yet Rodriguez, baseball’s first true Latino crossover megastar, shares another quixotic quality with De La Hoya, a Mexican-American boxer who rose from the barrio of East Los Angeles to become a U.S. Olympic gold medalist at the 1992 Barcelona Games _ a legion of haters has grown to rival the revelers and disparage both as phony.”

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