But it is unlikely the three-time American League MVP -- who announced Sunday that he will play his last game on Friday before shifting to a special advisory role with the team until December 2017 -- will join Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle in Cooperstown, thanks to the numerous steroid scandals that have shadowed Rodriguez through his career.
Rodriguez, suspended for the entire 2014 season for his role in the Biogenesis doping scandal, used performance-enhancing drugs as early as high school, journalist Selena Roberts claimed in her 2009 biography "A-Rod."
But Rodriguez's biggest sin, according to many Hall of Fame voters, isn't his use of steroids and other banned substances -- it's how he lied, blustered and bullied people whenever he was threatened by doping allegations.
Rodriguez was first called out in 2008, when Jose Canseco claimed A-Rod was a juicer in his book "Vindicated." "I did everything but inject the guy myself," Canseco wrote.
Still, many fans were disgusted by how Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa battered baseball's sacred and decades-old home run records with the help of illicit drugs, and they embraced Rodriguez as a hero who would reclaim the record books from the steroid cheats they believed had tainted the game.
Rodriguez helped fuel their faith in him during a 2007 "60 Minutes" interview, when Katie Couric asked if he had ever used performance-enhancing drugs.
"I've never felt overmatched on the baseball field," A-Rod told Couric in what turned out to be a bald-faced lie. "I've always been in a very strong, dominant position. And I felt that if I did my work as I've done since I was, you know, a rookie back in Seattle, I didn't have a problem competing at any level. So, no."
That strong denial would come back to haunt Rodriguez just two years later, when Roberts and her Sports Illustrated colleague David Epstein reported that A-Rod had tested positive for testosterone and Primobolan six years later, when he won his first MVP award as a shortstop with the Texas Rangers.
None of the posturing worked. Rodriguez was banned a record 211 games - which was later reduced to 162 games - and revealed to have spent $305,000 for incriminating documents. "60 Minutes" revealed A-Rod had leaked the names of teammates implicated in the case. The cartoonish barrage of lawsuits he launched -- including against the Yankee's team doctor and the MLB Players Union -- went nowhere.
On Jan. 29, 2014, weeks after an arbitrator upheld Rodriguez's ban for the duration of the 2014 season, Rodriguez's attorney Joseph Tacopina arranged for a "Queen for a Day" immunity agreement so the slugger who had denied everything could meet with assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Sullivan and confess all.
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