To this day, the parties dispute whose idea it was to exercise the opt-out clause. Boras maintains that he would never take such a step without his client’s direction. But people close to Rodriguez insist he never approved it and made that clear in the meeting with Boras’s staff in Newport Beach. Either way, the action created two deep rifts, one between Rodriguez and the Yankees, and another between Rodriguez and Boras.

Reconciliation

Rodriguez had been drifting from Boras by then. The disagreement over the opt-out led Rodriguez to sever the relationship formally, with papers filed with the players’ union — but not before Boras was brought in to help supervise one last document.

Perhaps the only people happy with news of the opt-out were the Rangers, who had agreed to pay a subsidy of $21.3 million to the Yankees at the time of the 2004 trade. Once Rodriguez exercised the option, the original contract evaporated, and the Rangers were off the hook. Texas obviously had no interest in bringing Rodriguez back, but other teams were intrigued.

In early November, it looked as if Rodriguez was leaving New York. That was when Rivera intervened.

Rodriguez placed his conciliatory call to Hank Steinbrenner. He said he had never wanted to opt out and again blamed Boras.

Rodriguez then enlisted the help of John Mallory, a Goldman Sachs wealth management adviser he knew from Miami. Mallory put Rodriguez in touch with his fellow Goldman Sachs financial adviser Gerald Cardinale, who had done work for the Yankees, and the two financial experts began serving as intermediaries between Rodriguez and the Yankees.

Cardinale was the Yankees’ banker. He had worked on lucrative business deals with the team.

Mallory and Cardinale got on a Goldman Sachs phone line and called Randy Levine, the Yankees’ team president. Mallory told Levine what Rodriguez had said to Hank Steinbrenner. He said Rodriguez was sorry, was ready to apologize to the Steinbrenners in person and wanted to return to the Yankees.

Despite their public outrage, the Yankees had reasons to consider a reunion.

Rodriguez was coming off another sensational year, and he had helped fill Yankee Stadium to capacity since his arrival in 2004. The Yankees set an attendance record that year with 3,775,292 fans, only to be broken in each of the next four years. From 2005 to 2008, Rodriguez never played before fewer than 4 million fans at the old Yankee Stadium, and ratings on the team-owned YES Network soared.