If Alex Rodriguez were as unsuccessful on the baseball field as he proved to be in the legal arena, then no one would care about him in the first place.
A-Rod dropped his third and final lawsuit on Thursday, his medical malpractice suit against Yankees doctor Christopher Ahmad and New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. Rodriguez’s attorney Alan Ripka and spokesman Ron Berkowitz both confirmed that the case had been discontinued in Bronx court and reiterated the disgraced slugger’s desire to return to action with the Yankees next year.
“All legal matters have been resolved,” Berkowitz said Friday. “Alex looks forward to taking the field in 2015.”
The 38-year-old Rodriguez has kept nearly totally silent since independent arbitrator Fredric Horowitz reduced his Major League Baseball suspension from 211 games to the entire 2014 season for his involvement with Biogenesis, the now-shuttered South Florida anti-aging clinic. The Yankees have Rodriguez signed for three more years and $61 million, ending in 2017. In January, Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner called A-Rod “an asset” when healthy and wouldn’t rule out a scenario in which Rodriguez once again played for the Yankees.
When Steinbrenner made those comments, Rodriguez had three lawsuits in play. In addition to his litigation against Ahmad for allegedly misdiagnosing Rodriguez’s hip injury, he filed one suit against MLB and another against both MLB and the Players Association, both tied into his discipline from MLB.
He dropped those two cases on Feb. 7, and now the medical malpractice suit is finished, too, all three gone before reaching trial. The medical malpractice suit is discontinued with prejudice, according to the court filing, which means Rodriguez cannot reopen this case.
“Alex Rodriguez wanted no distractions from his life in coming back to the Yankees,” Ripka said.
At the least, the Yankees figure to let Rodriguez report to spring training next year to see how he looks physically. If he’s unable to perform due to his myriad ailments, then the Yankees’ insurance policy would cover a significant portion of Rodriguez’s remaining salary. Yet if Rodriguez proves capable of playing, then the Yankees would either have to forgive Rodriguez for the trauma he created last year and welcome him back or else pay him a record-setting fee to go away.
“He’s under contract, so you kind of expect him to be back,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said Friday. “Obviously, sitting out a year is not an easy thing to do. … We’ll worry about next year next year.”