AROD GIVES 1% OUT OF $368,000 RAISED FOR CHARITY: Selena Roberts of the NEW YORK TIMES has a piece today on the burgeoning financial empire of Alex Rodriguez, who turns out to be quite the landlord (he owns 16 apt. complexes) and charitable giver.
Roberts characterizes everyone's favorite muscular she-male lover as "an obsessive pursuer of cold, hard numbers on and off the bases, with serially disingenuous nods to his ever-challenged image."
More: "(Rodriguez) isn't exactly a slumlord ... he has become a landlord caricature among dwellers who hold him accountable for, say, the stack of molding mattresses by the dumpster at Newport Villas (in Tampa)"
Rodriguez recently doubled late fees to $100 on his $600 per-month units, we guess to make up for the $12M he's lost in the value of his properties in Tampa alone (oops!).
On the charity front, Roberts chronicles ARod's donations to his charitable foundation, something called the AROD Family Foundation. While he has earned almost $200M since 1997, in "eight years of available documents, [his] donations averaged $30,000 a year and gifts distributed to the community averaged $13,000 a year."
The best part: In year's he cleared over $25M in salary alone, Rodriguez did not contribute more than $5,500 in 2002 to the foundation, and in 2006 the foundation "did not give away more than $5,090 despite a fund-raiser that collected $368,000."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/sp...HhsE3IYr712PUw