It's official: A-Rod to sport pinstripes

NEW YORK — Alex Rodriguez is coming back to New York, the city he left when he was 4, and moving onto the biggest stage in town — Yankee Stadium.

Baseball's highest-paid player, and perhaps its most talented, was finally and officially dealt to the New York Yankees from Texas on Monday after commissioner Bud Selig approved the record-setting swap.

"I'm pretty excited. This is a big, big one," Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said at the team's minor league complex in Tampa, Fla.

"It ranks with when we signed Reggie," he said, a reference to slugger Reggie Jackson.

Rodriguez, the first reigning MVP to be traded, will be introduced at the stadium on Tuesday, flanked by manager Joe

Torre and Yankees captain Derek Jeter, who will keep his shortstop job. The 28-year-old A-Rod will shift to third base to fill the hole left when Aaron Boone wrecked a knee last month.

Texas gets second baseman Alfonso Soriano and a minor league player to be named, but it will still have to pay $67 million of the $179 million Rodriguez is owed over the remainder of his deal.

Steinbrenner and Yankees general manager Brian Cashman personally assured Jeter that he would keep his position and that Rodriguez would switch to third — where his only major league experience is one inning during an All-Star game.

"Derek's response to me was he thinks this is pretty cool," said Cashman, who also said moving Jeter was "not a consideration whatsoever."

"You go with the man that brought you to the dance," he said. "You're going to stick with him. You don't mess with success. . . . There is no issue there — who's the starting quarterback? We have arguably the best left side of the infield in the history of baseball."

Fervid Yankees fan and former mayor Rudolph Giuliani couldn't agree more.

"It's great for the city. He's returning home," he told The Associated Press. "This could be another variation of Maris-Mantle, Jackson-Munson, Gehrig-Ruth."

Rodriguez, signed to a record $252 million, 10-year contract by the Rangers in December 2000, grew tired of Texas after three last-place finishes.

He was born in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, not far from where Manny Ramirez grew up, just a few miles from Yankee Stadium. And even though his father, Victor, closed his shoe store and moved the family to the Dominican Republic in 1979, his fondness for the city remained.