Alex Rodriguez Reportedly Taking After-Hours Batting Practice at Madonna's Central Park West Apartment

Legendary stick man Alex Rodriquez has been outed (again) for taking extracurricular batting practice with a woman who is not his wife. Exposed as an adulterer in the early part of the 2007season, the reigning Most Valuable Player of the American League apparently is enjoying off-field play with Madonna, the pop singer who recently left her husband, British director Guy Ritchie. The very-married A-Rod, who last season was embarrassed by revelations he hosted a Hogtown stripper at his hotel suite during a Yankees road trip to Toronto, has been visiting the music diva at her New York City apartment while playing home-stands in the Big Apple.

Madonna has lived the past seven years in England, but her marriage reportedly collapsed due to Ritchie's disenchantment with his wife's religion, which is based on the study of the Kabala.

In the venerable Jewish religion of which Kabala is a part, only elderly men are supposed to be able to be worthy of studying this mystical component of Judaism. An Italian-American, Madonna was raised in the Roman Catholic faith and named her first daughter "Lourdes" after the location in France where the Virgin Mary appeared to St. Bernadette. However, Madonna fell for a bastardization of the Kabala that has proved seductive to celebrities with a penchant for New Age religion and are not otherwise disposed to joining Hollywood's reigning cult, Scientology. Britney Spears briefly flirted with this brand of Kabala before she went meshuggah last year. Another celebrity convert is the washed-up cinema sexpot Demi Moore. (This New Age brand of Kabala apparently has no proscription on adultery as Moore recently was linked to former President Bill Clinton.)

Been There, Done That

In his latest attempt at off-field scoring, A-Rod is trotting down the base path blazed by José Canseco, another heavy-hitter who was the 1988 American League Most Valuable Player. In 1991, Canseco and Madonna were an item when both lived on the Gold Coast that was swinging, cocaine-fueled Miami, Florida. In a news item reminiscent of the most recent revelation of Madonna's penchant for pennant-winning baseball boy toys, the New York Times on May 13, 1991 reported that Canseco, who had recently reconciled with his estranged first wife, was caught leaving Madonna's New York apartment building one morning.

According to the Times, "Jose Canseco says his late night get-together with rock star Madonna was an innocent one. 'We're just friends,' the Oakland Athletics' outfielder told reporters traveling with the Athletics for their weekend series with the Yankees. 'She's a nice lady.'"

In his memoir Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'roids, Smash Hits, and how Baseball Got Big, a paean to the joys of steroids abuse, Canseco said that Madonna had wanted to marry him. The Big Man was not in love with her, though. Canseco, who at the time of his fling with Madonna was married to a former Miss Miami and followed up that failed marriage by tying the knot with a Hooters waitress, was enthralled by Madonna's celebrity, which was at its peak in the early '90s.

Madonna, who was one of the seminal figures in making outre vulgarity acceptable in the mass media, would publish her book Sex the following year, during which Canseco was traded away from the Oakland Athletics, where he had his greatest success, to the Texas Rangers. The Athletics, who had won three American League titles and one World Series with Canseco as the heart of their batting order, won the American West pennant after the trade, but did not advance to the World Series. The team lost the AL Championship Series to the Blue Jays of Toronto, which 15 years later, would play host to A-Rod's first public humilation for alleged adultery.

In his follow-up book, Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle to Save Baseball, José Canseco -- the man who blew the whistle on the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs by major league ballplayers -- says that the hates A-Rod as the (younger) married slugger with the wandering eye apparently hit on the wife of baseball's self-anointed Steroids King. Canseco also claims in his new book that he introduced A-Rod to a steroids dealer.

Stray-Rod

In its May 30, 2007 edition, the New York Post -- in a feature headlined STRAY-ROD: Alex Hits Strip Club With Mystery Blonde -- Rodriguez was linked to a Toronto stripper, whom he hosted at his suite at the Four Seasons Hotel during a road-trip to Hogtown by the Yankees. The Post reported, "The cozy duo dined with two pals at a pricey steakhouse late Sunday night, then headed to a glitzy strip club before making their way to his hotel, where the pair ducked into an elevator and headed upstairs just after midnight."

The Post was careful to point out that most of A-Rod's Yankees teammates, along with the coaching staff, were staying at the Park Hyatt Hotel. Apparently, his wife was back in Gotham.

"Cynthia Rodriguez - A-Rod's wife and mother of their 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Natasha - was nowhere to be seen during the slugger's big night out on the town," the Post revealed, "which occurred the evening before the last-place Bronx Bombers' pathetic 7-2 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays."

During a subsequent road trip to Fenway Park, the home of the Yankees' hated rivals the Boston Red Sox, many BoSox fans greeted A-Rod wearing cut-out masks of a generic blonde woman, taunting the-then two-time M.V.P. over his romp with the stripper. (A-Rod would go on to win his third M.V.P. award that season.) Two days before the Fourth of July, a defiant Cynthia Rodriquez attended a game at Yankee Stadium, and sat in the family section. In response to the tabloids' story about her straying husband and the fans' reaction to the third baseman's error, Mrs. Rodriguez wore a white tank top indiscreetly stencilled with an obscene slogan, that starts out with a four-letter Anglo-Saxonism beginning with the letter "F" followed by "You."

Brian Cashman, the General Manager of the New York Yankees, admonished both A-Rod and his missus about the obscene shirt.

"I did speak to Cynthia," Cashman told the Toronto Star, "and she's part of the family and obviously we just keep that in house."

Following the recent revelations that their All-Star slugger has (again) strayed from the base paths, the New York Yankees front office had better get ready to deputize the ushers serving the family section as fashion police. (They can take as their template the actions of former Yankee G.M. Bob Watson, who as the chief of discipline for Major League Baseball, deputized umpires as fashion police to terrorize Red Sox manager Terry Francona over his sweatshirt.)

"Oops! ... I Did It Again"

Us Weekly reports that the door men of Madonna's Central Park West neighborhood are abuzz with gossip about the late night visits of the 32 year-old A-Rod to the 49 year-old Madonna. The affair may have begun two months ago, when A-Rod attended a Madonna concert in New York on April 30^th. Subsequently, the saucy singer was spotted sitting in A-Rod's box seats at Yankee Stadium on June 22^nd, taking in a game. Madonna has never before attended a Yankees game in her quarter-century of celebrity, despite maintaining digs in the Big Apple.

Press agents for A-Rod and Madonna both refused to comment on the allegations that Madonna was fielding batting practice from the Yankees' superstar, the highest paid player in baseball. The off-field dalliance apparently hasn't hurt Rodriguez: After overcoming an early season injury, A-Rod is now batting a lusty .322, poling 16 home-runs and batting in 44 runs scored.

With 534 career homers, A-Rod ranks second among active players in the game, trailing only Ken Griffey, Jr. As to what base he has made it to with Madonna strictly is speculation at this point.

Sources:

ABC News, "Canseco Links A-Rod to Steroids Dealer, Report Says"; "Excerpt: Vindicated"

Boston Herald, Welcome to "Shirtgate"; "Lobby blogging: The Francona Rule"

New York Post, "A-ROD'S A YANKEE DOODLE RANDY, HITS A STRIP JOINT WITH TORONTO BABE"

New York Times, "BASEBALL; Canseco: 'Just Friends'"

Toronto Star, "F-Rod's spouse makes nasty T-shirt statement"

Us Weekly, "NY Yankee Making Late-Night Visits to Madonna's Apartment"