Alex Rodriguez’s ex-wife, Cynthia Rodriguez Nicolas (née Scurtis), candidly admitted that the baseball icon came up short in the fatherhood department immediately after their divorce.
“We functioned very quickly coparenting,” Cynthia said in episode 2 of Alex vs ARod, which premieres Thursday, November 20, on HBO. “The girls, in order to see them, they have to travel and they’re so small. So I would travel with them. He would come back and, if he had a day off, he would come. He was amazing when he was present. It’s just that those times were so select.”
Cynthia, 52, filed for divorce from Alex, 50, in 2008 after six years of marriage, alleging their relationship was “irretrievably broken because of the husband’s extramarital affairs and other marital misconduct.”
The couple shares two daughters: Natasha, born in 2004, and Ella, born in 2008.
“Alex has emotionally abandoned his wife and children and has left her with no choice but to divorce him,” the petition said, after years of Alex’s rumored infidelity, including an alleged affair with Madonna.
Cynthia partially chalked up Alex’s behavior to his estranged father, Victor, who abandoned Alex’s family when he was 9 years old.
“I just don’t think he had that perspective or that parent to pull him to the side to say, ‘What are you doing?’” Cynthia said. “That’s where the self-confidence comes in, and the groundedness and the rootedness of somebody’s moral fiber. He was lacking in those areas. He just was.”
Cynthia arranged a reunion between Alex and his father in 2000, but the reconciliation ultimately fell flat. Alex’s father died in 2014.
“I don’t know, they have might still gone that way,” Cynthia said about Alex and Victor. “Maybe his father didn’t have skills that he would have needed. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t have suffered the loss of his dad, but maybe he wouldn’t have been trying to aggressively become the best he could otherwise. I mean, who knows, right?”
Alex acknowledged that the lack of a male role model in his life potentially impacted his life both positively and negatively.
“I’m not sure I would have accomplished what I did on the field with a present father,” he said in the series. “But I started to think that having a present father would have helped me avoid some of the dumbass decisions that I’ve made.”
When his marriage was coming to an end, Alex admitted that his lack of proper “self-development” became evident.
“Everything was moving so fast,” Alex recalled. “It was a blur. I could have been really mature on the field, but that doesn’t mean that my off-the-field development was caught up to that. There was a huge disconnect.”
Since retiring from baseball in August 2016, Alex has become much more active in the lives of his daughters, both of whom are featured in the docuseries.
The third episode of Alex vs ARod premieres Thursday, November 20, at 9 p.m. ET on HBO. All episodes will be available to stream on HBO Max.
