More chapters are coming in the Alex Rodriguez saga. They’re always coming. But this epic chapter concluded Thursday with a whimper, a sense of resignation from our star’s camp and vague promises that might never be realized.
Yup, A-Rod’s appeal hearing against Major League Baseball wrapped up Thursday evening, so if you had “12 days” in the pool, you won. The ball is now in the hands of independent arbitrator Fredric Horowitz, whose decision on Rodriguez’s 211-game suspension should come down in about a month.
Even that step won’t give you or the Yankees any desired clarity, however — well, unless Horowitz takes the unlikely step of fully eradicating the sentence — as Team A-Rod couldn’t have made it any clearer that it sees this battle transcending Horowitz’s throne.
“We’ll wait for the decision, which we all sort of expect, based on what’s gone on here,” A-Rod’s lead attorney, Joseph Tacopina, said Thursday morning. “And then we’ll take it to a different jurisdiction. A real jurisdiction.”
That means federal court, where A-Rod’s lawsuit against MLB currently resides and where he’ll surely try to obtain an injunction that would keep him on the field (and getting paid). A-Rod didn’t attend the final day (he wasn’t required to go to any of it) after he angrily departed Wednesday’s proceedings when Horowitz ruled commissioner Bud Selig didn’t have to testify, and then challenged Selig on Mike Francesa’s WFAN show. A-Rod had plans to fly to Miami on Thursday.
“We’ll head to another venue after this is done,” Tacopina said. “We’ll be able to depose Mr. Selig, one way or the other.”
Maybe. But history shows that federal court is not sympathetic to claims that have been settled in binding arbitration. Maybe Team A-Rod can find a judge and jury that believes Rodriguez was gypped by not getting to “confront his accuser.” I wouldn’t bet $31 on it, though, let alone the roughly $31 million that A-Rod has at stake.
And speaking of bets, Rodriguez spokesman Ron Berkowitz vowed Thursday morning there would be a public disclosure of evidence Friday that would shed new light on this case.
Whether that meant hearing transcripts, dirt on the MLB investigators or something else, it’s not clear. By Thursday night, however, it appeared that such a plan wasn’t coming to fruition.
Yes, it has been a messy 12 days — spread out, fittingly, over 53 days, as though the baseball gods knew we couldn’t handle such intensity in a shorter period — and it made sense, too that Thursday featured a final appearance by Hispanics Across America and Rev. Ruben Diaz, the New York State Senator, who led a “prayer vigil” by attacking MLB once more and displaying utter ignorance over how the appeals process works.
Messy doesn’t mean bad, though. The byproduct of MLB’s vigilance against illegal performance-enhancing drugs has been the additional narrative of cops and robbers in the game, and A-Rod, bless him, embraced his villain’s roll with passion. How much more money did the Yankees make in 2013 thanks to Rodriguez’s challenge of his suspension and return to the team?
Furthermore, A-Rod and his attorneys have essentially done MLB a favor, albeit at a premium cost of resources and energy.
Just as any robber makes the cops raise their game, Rodriguez has exposed interesting loopholes in the game’s collective bargaining agreement that figure to get closed. And it’s good the attorneys have highlighted some of the questionable behavior by MLB’s investigators. We should be discussing how far we want these folks to go in the name of the unattainable fully “clean” game.
You’d think Horowitz will uphold the bulk of the suspension, and that A-Rod’s efforts in the real world will fall flat. We aren’t there yet, though. Plenty more adventures to come.
And even though this adventure ended with a thud, we’ll still remember it fondly.