By comparison, Seahawks-Broncos was a competitive contest compared to Alex Emmanuel Rodriguez v. Major League Baseball.
Rodriguez spent a fortune, lost any lingering credibility he had and became even more of a pariah among his major league brethren, all to pick up 49 games — the difference between the 211-game suspension levied by Bud Selig and the ultimate 162-game ban imposed by arbitrator Fredric Horowitz.
As victories go, it is like winning a weed garden. This couldn’t really be the strategy that all of Rodriguez’s lawyers, public relations men, crisis managers and private investigators suggested to him, could it? Cajole, bully, torture the truth, promise an endless fight and then slink from the legal battlefield a coward — telling your “truth” only to Mike Francesa, but never during the two opportunities to raise your right hand and swear to do so.
A-Rod and his posse put on the show of saying the arbitration process always was tilted against them, but wait until this gets to an actual federal court. Just wait. Well, the wait is over. Rodriguez dropped his lawsuits on Friday against MLB, Selig and the Players Association. Rodriguez’s lead attorney, Joe Tacopina, told our Ken Davidoff that despite the initial pledge to do so, Rodriguez would not be attending spring training.
Another reminder the initial statements of Rodriguez or anybody paid to make them for A-Rod tend to have the same worth as Kei Igawa’s Yankees career.
A-Rod’s side turned out to be really good at bluster and arrogance and really bad at, you know, the law and sound advice. Rodriguez probably had an opportunity in the early portion of the Biogenesis investigation to work out a suspension with MLB for perhaps somewhere in the 100-150-game range, which would have saved him the GNP-like expenditure he incurred on his phalanx of lawyers, spokesmen, etc.
It also would have kept him from having to sue his own union, a suit that included broadsides at the recently deceased and beloved head of the association, Michael Weiner. It would have meant one of his lawyers never took a thinly veiled swipe at one of his few public supporters, David Ortiz. It is one thing to be persona non grata with fans or MLB or the Yankees front office. But this tactic has dropped A-Rod’s popularity among fellow players to somewhere between day-night doubleheaders and torn ACLs. So you wonder if he ever can come back to the fraternity without risk of constant beanballs and seclusion.
The Rodriguez strategy now seems to be to disappear from sight for a while, cool the temperature around him. There will probably soon follow some acts of contrition — sincerity optional. Rodriguez has $61 million owed him from 2015-17 and after all that has been lost, he probably has recognized the need not to endanger that stockpile, as well.
But let’s see Rodriguez — as needy for public and professional love as he is greedy for the dollars — actually find the discipline to avoid the spotlight, limelight and lowlight for a while. Let’s put it this way, if he were bare-knuckle boxing Jose Canseco for blood money on a barge in the Mississippi sometime soon, it wouldn’t be the most shocking occurrence.
And it won’t be surprising either when film “leaks” of Rodriguez working out and hitting baseballs and sources close to the disgraced slugger saying he can’t wait to get back on the field for the Yankees in 2015. Yep, the last chapter is hardly done. At some point we will learn, as A-Rod tries to play again, if he can with those damaged hips and fading skills and without help in a vial. We will see if the Yankees find a way to maneuver to get insurance to pay most of what is left or simply cut him.
That is in the future. In the now, the Yankees are huge winners. They got $25 million back in Rodriguez salary this year, it didn’t get them under the $189 million luxury tax threshold, but it helped defray the cost of Masahiro Tanaka. Now, they also find out Rodriguez is not coming to spring training and they can begin a transition without him.
The Commissioner’s Office took some bumps along the way, especially questioning their tactics in going after Rodriguez. And a mature discussion still needs to be had about how far we want our sports leagues to go to strive for cleaner games.
But in the end, they would take the scrapes they received for this end game. For Rodriguez suspended all of 2014 and now showing again he doesn’t really have the stomach or the honor or the credibility for a legal fight that could unseal testimony in the Anthony Galea case and open through discovery other nefarious avenues and potentially raise the possibility of perjury if he raised his right hand.
So, Rodriguez finally did what he should have a long time and millions of dollars ago. He went away quietly.