Major League Baseball has a message for Alex Rodriguez: You don’t have a prayer of getting the courts to overturn your 162-game doping suspension.
MLB filed legal papers on Tuesday outlining why it believes the fading Yankees star’s federal lawsuit opposing the suspension slapped on him by an independent arbitrator is merit-less and should be tossed, saying it’s almost unheard of for the court system to overturn labor-arbitration decisions while pointing out that A-Rod has never denied taking illegal performance enhancing drugs.
“The complaint reflects nothing more than Rodriguez’s disagreement with the arbitrator’s evaluation of the evidence and the conclusions the arbitrator reached based upon his evaluation of the evidence,” MLB lawyer Howard Ganz wrote to Manhattan federal Judge Edgardo Ramos.
”Moreover, it bears emphasis that Rodriguez is demanding that the court set aside an impartial arbitrator’s conclusion that there was just cause for discipline imposed without ever having denied engaging in the misconduct with which he was charged – either during the course of the arbitration proceedings, or indeed, even in the complaint filed in this action,” Ganz added.
Rodriguez was suspended 162 games on Jan. 11 after independent arbitrator Fredric Horowitz concluded he violated the league’s Drug Program by using three types of PEDs multiple times over three years and then tried to obstruct MLB’s investigation of it. Horowitz was reviewing his involvement in Biogenesis, the shuttered South Florida anti-aging clinic.
A-Rod then filed suit two days later against the league, commissioner Bud Selig and the Players Association, seeking to vacate the suspension and infuriating his own union in the process by alleging it “completely abdicated its responsibility” to him.
Ramos granted Ganz’s request for a Feb. 14 conference to discuss MLB’s yet-to-be-filed motion to dismiss the suit – the same day the Yankees open training camp in Tampa.
Ganz said it’s his understanding that the Players Association will file papers to dismiss the claim “it breached its duty of fair representation” to A-Rod — adding that MLB plans to join the union “in that motion.”
Ganz also said Rodriguez is off base in claiming his suspension should be overturned because he believes the arbitrator is partial to MLB.
“Neither the adverse arbitral rulings about which Rodriguez complains, nor the claim that the impartial arbitrator is a baseball fan, nor the purely speculative allegation the impartial arbitrator decided in MLB’s favor for fear that his position as arbitrator might be terminated provide any basis” to void the suspension,” Ganz wrote.
Rodriguez also filed another on lawsuit against MLB and Selig on Oct. 4, accusing them of conducting a “witch hunt” to run him out of baseball. That suit is also in Manhattan federal court, but Rodriguez’s lawyers want it moved back to state court where it was originally filed.
Messages left with Rodriguez’s lawyers were not immediately returned.