Jennifer Lopez Surprised Alex Rodriguez With A Birthday Cake, But He Didn't Eat It

Alex Rodriguez was in his usual spot in the Sunday Night Baseball booth for Yankees-Red Sox when he was surprised by fiancée Jennifer Lopez and his two daughters. Saturday was his 44th birthday, and they had brought him a cake. The baked good itself was ... understated.

Perhaps A-Rod had been all caked out from earlier in the weekend. During her concert on Friday, J-Lo had brought out a big-ass fancy cake, with Rodriguez’s first name spelled out in crystals, and had everyone sing “Happy Birthday” to him. The big-ass fancy cake made a second appearance at an afterparty, this time with sparklers. It would’ve been tough for ESPN’s production crew to compete with that custom dessert, but the sheet cake they got for his on-air surprise didn’t even have his name on it. It seems that someone made a last-minute run to Market Basket.

As told from the chain of tweets from baseball writers who were at Sunday’s game, Rodriguez didn’t actually eat any of the nameless cake. Some scavenging reporters picked at it, however. That’s one of the perks of this business—sometimes, you get to eat some food a famous person didn’t deem fit to put in their body. The Boston Globe’s Pete Abraham saw it when it was untouched:

The Globe’s Julian McWilliams saw it after a couple of slices (or maybe one large dinner slice):

Kevin Kernan of the New York Post saw it a little later. (What the hell happened to the top-left corner? Did that “slice” even have any actual cake in it? Did some sicko scoop a dollop of frosting with their fingers?)

When The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler came upon it, the cake had been ravaged:

That is the fate this cake deserves. Give the rest to the rats beneath Fenway.