Madonna, Alex Rodriguez in Mexico City | Celebrities

1st December 2008

NEW York Yankees baseball star Alex Rodriguez has appeared in Mexico City on the same weekend as Madonna - a turn of events he called "very good".

The 33-year-old spent two hours on Sunday teaching kids to bat at a new sports centre built on a landfill in the poor suburb of Nezahualcoyotl.

Madonna, meanwhile prepared to perform for a sold-out second night in the capital as part of her Sticky & Sweet tour.

When asked what he thought about being in the sprawling capital at the same time as Madonna, Rodriguez said it was "very good", without elaborating.

Rodriguez and his wife divorced in September, months after he made tabloid headlines for a rumoured, but denied, dalliance with Madonna.

Less than four weeks later, Madonna and filmmaker husband Guy Ritchie announced their own split after nearly eight years of marriage.

Rodriguez, known by fans as "A-Rod", was invited to inaugurate the sports centre by Mexico's richest man, Carlos Slim, whose Telmex Foundation sponsored its construction. The site includes two baseball diamonds and 25 soccer fields.

"It's a pleasure to talk about baseball, to talk about the importance of keeping children off the streets, out of drugs and out of all the bad things that there are in this life," the New York City-born Rodriguez said in Spanish.

It wasn't immediately known if Rodriguez and Madonna met while in Mexico City.

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