SELLER: Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez
LOCATION: Miami Beach, FL
PRICE: $38,000,000
SIZE: 19,861 square feet, 9 bedrooms, 11 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In case any of y'all celebrity real estate-o-philes have managed not to hear yet, currently injured New York Yankee Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez—He of the 10-year, $275,000,000 contract—(not so quietly) slid his brand-spanking new mansion in Miami Beach, FL on the market with a four-bagger asking price of $38,000,000.

In addition to his considerable (and considerably lucrative) baseball abilities Mister Rodriguez is a well-known serial celebrity dater who's famously frolicked with man-magnets like Madonna, Kate Hudson, and Cameron Diaz. So the celebrity gossips allege, the hunky short stop currently gets busy with a professional lady-wrestler named Torrie Wilson. Your Mama had never heard of this Miss Wilson person before but a few minutes on the internets and we learned the bodaciously buxom faux-blond has appeared in her birthday suited glory in Playboy twice and, bless her heart, cultivates and incorporates mutual and forced tongue kissing with both men and woman as part of her professional persona. As, uhm, inneresting as Miss Wilson's tawdry-for-pay-ways may be, it's not her real estate story we're telling today.

Property records Your Mama peeped are frustratingly opaque but The Daily News reported Mister A-Rod paid $24,000,000 in [June] 2010 for the pair of side-by-side Miami Beach parcels that combined total just over 1.1 acres and together stretch 275 prime feet along Biscayne Bay frontage.

Almost as soon as the ink was dry on the deed's dotted line, Mister A-Rod rolled up his renovation sleeves and removed whatever structure(s) did (or did not) stand on the two parcels to make way for an all new, colossal and very contemporary mansion with, according to current listing information, 9 bedrooms and 11 full and 2 half bathrooms in 19,861 square feet of interior space.

The straight lines and flat planes that make up the exteriors volumes is mimicked on the inside with boxy, voluminous and semi-transparent living spaces stripped bare of any extraneous or purely decorative architectural detailing such as baseboards and moldings. There are matte-finished wide-plank white oak wood flooring; long expanses of crisp white walls ideal for displaying Mister A-Rod's growing art contemporary art collection; lofty and sometimes soaring, double-height ceilings; complete walls of metal-framed, floor-to-ceiling windows and doors that reach as high as 12 feet and peel back to connect to the waterside recreation and entertainment areas.

The main floor living/entertaining spaces, all sparely furnished with mostly low-profile and largely white- or putty-colored upholstered pieces, include a boo-teek hotel lobby-like foyer and a spacious but still comfortably scaled living/dining room with two full walls of glass that slide open to the backyard area(s) and third glass wall that glides open to a glass- and foliage-walled atrium. Although no part of the house appears to be particularly formal in listing photographs, the less-formal, family areas include an open-plan kitchen/breakfast/family room; a compact, window-lined television viewing room for two plus a moody, a sexed-up home theater and a cavernous, double-height game room with long, built-in wet bar and entertainment center fitted with (at least) three tee-vees.

Other customized amenities available only to the very rich include a 3,000 square foot sports room/fitness center and a separate gym with steam shower; a commercial-grade elevator for moving large pieces of furniture and artwork from floor to floor; a roof top terrace with glittering views of the bay and Miami's downtown skyline; two gated motor courts and garage space for four cars; and a two-story guest house/poolside lounging pavilion with at least two flat-screen tee-vees mounted on either side of the built-in barbecue.

The 2,200 square foot second floor master suite—all by itself almost the size of the average American home—wraps around the aforementioned glass and foliage-walled atrium and encompasses a bedroom, sitting room, dual bathrooms and the sort of closet space and dressing areas that Your Mama better find  in a twenty thousand square foot pile in Miami Beach with a hefty-hefty-hefty price tag of nearly for forty million smackers. Glass walls around the atrium provide multiple layers of transparency the make it possible to stand in the entirely glass-walled shower in one of the two master bathrooms and see across the atrium and clear through the master sitting room to the sparking Biscayne Bay. It's not a set up for the bashful or corporeally ashamed—there are wonderfully heavy-looking curtains for those folks—but it's an undeniably spectacular (if showy) design conceit.

Naturally, the nearly new mansion comes complete with all the high-tech bells and whistles a rich person can pay for such as automated lighting and climate systems, surround sound throughout the property, and a very serious security system with 16 cameras. Listing information helpfully notes the residence is equipped with high-impact glass and a self-powered generator to withstand the devastating hurricanes that periodically ravage South Florida (and the surrounding states).

Besides the two-story guest house and attached poolside pavilion, the waterside back yard features a deep, shaded outdoor living lounge with fireplace; poolside sunbathing terrace and wide strips of well-watered and -groomed lawns; an au courant vanishing edge swimming pool (and spa); and an second almost all glass pavilion of undetermined purpose (that may or may not be the above-mentioned work out room with steam shower).

Mister Rodriguez seems to be in the mood to shrink his real estate portfolio lately. In early 2011 he paid $5,500,000 on a 3,585 square foot, 35th-floor condo crib at the Rushmore building in New York City that he flipped back on the market 10 (or so) months later with a substantially higher eight million dollar price tag. In April of this year (2012) he sold the 5 bedroom and 5.5 bathroom apartment for $6,600,000 to a former airline executive turned financier.

Two years ago he (and his now ex-wife Cynthia) sold a 9,010 square foot water front residence in Coral Gables, FL for $8,500,000. It was originally listed in fall 2008 with a much higher asking price of $14,876,000. At about the same time in 2008 Mister and ex-Missus A-Rod listed their Coral Gables crib they also hoisted their New York City spread on the the market with a $14,00,000 asking price. The erstwhile couple finally unloaded the 4,600 square foot Park Avenue apartment in March 2009 for $9,900,000.

listing photos: ONE Sotheby's International Realty

A pair of 35th floor apartments at New York City's ludicrously expensive and seriously status-conscious 15 Central Park West building—one of which was leased a couple years ago by Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez*—recently hit the market with a psyche-brutalizing price tag of $95,000,000.

*Mister A-Rod has recently hoisted his bay front mansion in Miami Beach with a $38,000,000 price tag.

Fifteen Central Park West is the same building, the children will surely recall, where Russian chemist turned multi-billionaire potash potentate Dmitry Rybolovlev paid financier Sanford Weill an astronomical $88,000,000 for substantially larger, terrace wrapped penthouse—atop the shorter of the complex's two towers.

Other well-heeled owners of apartments at 15 Central Park West (15CPW) include celebs like Denzel Washington and Sting and Trudy Styler as well as a slew of Wall Street fat cats like Goldman Sachs CEO/chairman Lloyd Blankfein (who paid $27,000,000 for his roost), hedge hog Daniel Loeb (who paid $45,000,000 for his 10,700 square foot two-unit combo crib).

Anyhoo, both of Mister Schecter's apartments at 15CPW are owned by octogenarian steel tycoon Leroy Schecter who, according to The New York Times, paid $18,900,000 for the two separate apartments in April 2008. The two units are currently in the process of being combined into one 5-6,000 square foot aerie with a desirable and rare, triple exposure (east, south, and west) and monthly common charges, according to listing information, of $7,349.

Lickety-split with the ink barely dry on the deed's dotted line(s) Mister Schecter leased the larger, three-bedroom and 3.5 bathroom unit at $40,000 per month to hotel/car rental/real estate brokerage tycoon Harry Silverman and the smaller two-bedroom and 2.5 bathroom unit to A-Rod at $30,000 per month.

As it turns out this isn't the first time at the real estate rodeo for Mister Schecter who unsuccessfully attempted to sell the then still-uncombined units in 2010 for a combined $55,000,000. He claims to have turned town an offer for $48,000,000—and probably he did, we don't know—opting instead to proceed with a combination that he and his Lady Real Estate believe makes it worth forty million more dollars than it was in 2010 as two separate apartments. And maybe it is, what do we know?

Current listing information indicates when the combination efforts are complete the full-floor tower condo will include four or five bedrooms (depending on use) and five full and two half bathrooms.

The floor plan included with current marketing materials reveals the planned combination isn't without its awkward moments and shows the public entertaining spaces include a compact foyer that gives way to a central, park-view library/reception room flanked by formal living and dining rooms, all with panoramic park an city views.

Double doors open directly from the dining room into the sizable center island eat-in kitchen. Your Mama thinks a proper butler's pantry/service kitchen and a God damn window would be customary in a nearly one hundred million dollar apartment but this kitchen, as per the floor plan, appears to lack both. The suburban mini-mansion sized apartment also does not have a single square foot of terrace space but it does have an two laundry rooms, one just off the kitchen equipped with a slop sink. We do love a slop sink, especially one on the 35th floor of a high-luxury high-rise.

One of the two bedroom wings stretches back behind the kitchen and contains two side-by-side bedrooms, each with private bathroom and urban western views through the surrounding towers towers and over to the mighty Hudson River.

An oddly-shaped gallery space lined with a trio of coast closets and a second half bathroom extends south from the foyer and connects to another series of corridors and vestibules off of which are the multi-room master suite—more on that in a second, a den with built-in wet bar and views to the south and west, a second laundry closet and a fourth bedroom with private en suite and walk-in closet. The den has an attached bathroom and could be closed up to create an actual fifth bedroom. That's a great option for someone who wants or needs a fifth bedroom but it also means the nearly 100 million dollar apartment wouldn't have an informal family living room. Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter are not and never will be in the market for a $100,000,000 residences but for that much money we want five bedrooms and a damn family room. We also want a terrace, at least a wee one. Sorry, but we do.

Anyhoo, a privacy-enhancing vestibule separate the public corridor from the master bedroom via a south-facing private sitting room flanked by a spacious park- and city-view bedroom and an bedroom-sized dressing room with bay window. A second vestibule separates the dressing room from the two-compartment master bathroom complete with double sinks, enclosed cubby for the crapper and separate soaking tub and shower.

Mister Schecter, as it turns out, also has an opulent (and arguably gaudy) 21,746 square foot, bay front villa on Miami's private, gated and ridiculously exclusive Indian Creek Island on the market with an asking price of $45,000,000. Property records we peeped indicate Mister Schecter paid Spanish language media entrepreneur Raul Alarcon Jr., $18,650,000 for the almost two acre, high-maintenance estate with its 7 bedroom and 11 full and 3 half bathroom estate in May 2006.

listing photo and floor plan: Core Group