After insisting for three years that they remained close, Alex Rodriguez said it was "important" to him to publicly confirm what others have said since he joined the team. "People start assuming that things are a lot worse than what they are, which they're not. But they're obviously not as great as they used to be. We were like blood brothers," Rodriguez said Monday. "You don't have to go to dinner with a guy four, five times a week to do what you're doing. It's actually much better than all you guys expect, but I just want to let the truth be known."