Alex Rodriguez Says His 89-Year-Old Mom Can Still Out Dance and Out Drink Him (Exclusive)

Alex Rodriguez is definitely a self-proclaimed mama's boy.

"She's the biggest inspiration in my life," the former Yankee tells PEOPLE of Lourdes, who raised Rodriguez as a single mother after they moved back to Miami from the Dominican Republic when Alex was 10.

"She's 89 today, and she can out dance me and out drink me," Rodriguez says with a laugh. "We recently had a holiday party and I was in bed at 2 a.m., and I woke up the next day and everyone was like, 'Yeah, your mom was up till 5:30 drinking!' I was like, 'Wow mom.' But she's amazing."

He also says she's the reason he worked so hard at baseball when he was younger.

"My father left when I was 10, and my mom had to go into overtime and start working two jobs," Rodriguez recalls. "She was a secretary in the morning, and she served tables at night, so she'd be gone from eight in the morning to midnight."

Because she was so busy earning a living, she wasn't even able to watch her son in his Little League baseball games.

"No, she did not come around very often. I remember she probably came to a handful of my games growing up, and I remember how nervous I would get," he says, adding, "When she was there, I was trying to really impress her."

She's also the reason he became interested in business at a young age, founding the A-Rod Corp in 1995. (Today that investment firm is valued at over $1 billion.)

"I knew early on that financial literacy was my way out, and a way to be able to help out my mother. So I just went into being a great student about financial literacy and how to unlock that for my family and myself," he says of being a self-taught investor.

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Part of his mission now is to inspire other people to learn how to grow their money.

"One of the things I'm really passionate about is financial leadership and really democratizing investing," Rodriguez explains. "So whether it's athletes or people of color or minorities like myself, there should be equality. That's really important to me, because I have a real issue with people thinking that investing is only for the super rich. It's true that for a long time it was this way — that the richest people got all the greatest opportunities — but I think it's kind of counterintuitive that you have to be a multimillionaire to be an investor."

He adds, "I always think about it from the position of my mom. If all she had to invest was $500, why couldn't she invest that?"

Rodriguez's latest venture is the Bloomberg Originals podcast The Deal, where he and his co-host, journalist Jason Kelly, dissect some of the biggest business moves made by athletes, entertainers and executives across industries. Famous guests include Derek Jeter, Michael Strahan and Maria Sharapova.

The 12-episode limited series will span both audio and video.

"The way that we see the world, at least my thesis is, is that growing up we had the three major sports: baseball, basketball, football," Rodriguez says of the podcast. "I think today the fourth sport — and probably as popular as any of them — is the business of sports and media."

He adds, "We thought there was an opportunity to really talk to some of the best minds in sports and media."

To read more about Alex Rodriguez, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE, on stands now.