The arbitrator hearing Alex Rodriguez 's appeal of his 211-game doping suspension upheld most of the punishment on Saturday, sidelining him for all of the 2014 regular season, 162 games, and the postseason.
The announcement, by Fredric Horowitz, Major League Baseball's chief arbitrator, means Rodriguez, the Yankees' third baseman and the highest-paid player in the sport, will not be eligible to return until the 2015 season. It raises the possibility that Rodriguez, who has been hobbled by injuries, may never play another game.
The 162-game suspension is the longest in baseball history for doping. As such, it amounts to a significant victory for Bud Selig, baseball's longtime commissioner, who in recent years has tried to redefine himself as a chief executive determined to crack down on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in the sport. With Selig planning to retire after the 2014 season, his legacy will now include an important milestone: a lengthy suspension of Rodriguez, one of the best players of his generation and one of the game's top home run hitters and someone who for years managed to sidestep baseball's strong suspicions that he was using banned substances.
"For more than five decades, the arbitration process under the basic agreement has been a fair and effective mechanism for resolving disputes and protecting player rights," the league said in a statement, referring to the collective-bargaining agreement that dictates the arbitration process. "While we believe the original 211-game suspension was appropriate, we respect the decision."
In a statement through his publicist, Rodriguez criticized the ruling and vowed to challenge it in court.
"The number of games sadly comes as no surprise, as the deck has been stacked against me from day one," Rodriguez said. "This is one man's decision, that was not put before a fair and impartial jury, does not involve me having failed a single drug test, is at odds with the facts and is inconsistent with the terms of the Joint Drug Agreement and the Basic Agreement, and relies on testimony and documents that would never have been allowed in any court in the United States because they are false and wholly unreliable."
The suspension will cost Rodriguez, the sport's highest-paid player, all of the $25 million the Yankees were obligated to pay him for the 2014 season.But when the suspension ends, Rodriguez will still be owed $61 million through a contract that runs through 2017. As such, Rodriguez will have an incentive to find a way to keep playing. He has battled significant hip injuries in recent years and will be 39 years old when he is eligible to return. If he cannot return, he could opt for a disability retirement that guarantees his money.
Major League Baseball did not make public details of Horowitz's decision, including his rationale for upholding most of the initial suspension. The players union, which was involved in representing Rodriguez in the arbitration, said it "strongly disagrees" with the decision.
Rodriguez and his team of legal advisers said they would try to appeal Horowitz's decision in the courts, or at least to delay Saturday's ruling through an injunction. They could do so through a lawsuit they have already filed against both baseball and Selig, a suit that claims that Rodriguez was the target of a "witch hunt." Or his advisers could pursue new litigation.
Rodriguez was already suggesting that he would take such action. "No player should have to go through what I have been dealing with, and I am exhausting all options to ensure not only that I get justice, but that players' contracts and rights are protected through the next round of bargaining, and that the MLB investigation and arbitration process cannot be used against others in the future the way it is currently being used to unjustly punish me," Rodriguez said in his statement.
However, it is unlikely that a judge would give Rodriguez much relief. Legal experts say it is unusual for a judge to second-guess an arbitrator in a labor dispute - especially in a situation like this, in which the process was agreed upon by the owners and the employees' union.
"They may be hoping they get an Alex Rodriguez fan, but even then, I'd be surprised if any state court judge would hear his case," said Steven Eckhaus, an employment law expert with the law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.
Selig suspended Rodriguez last August, citing his "use and possession of numerous forms of prohibited, performance-enhancing substances" over many years. Rodriguez, who admitted to using performance enhancers over a decade ago, when playing for the Texas Rangers, has denied using such drugs since then.
The suspension by Selig came six months after baseball started an investigation into Biogenesis of America, a now-defunct South Florida anti-aging clinic. Miami New Times, a weekly newspaper, had reported that it obtained patient records that appeared to connect a number of professional players, including Rodriguez, to the clinic, and that the clinic's director, Anthony Bosch, was supplying the players with banned performance enhancers.
After the article appeared, Major League Baseball quickly responded, but as its investigators descended on South Florida to verify the Miami New Times account, they ran into substantial resistance. Witnesses could not be trusted or sought cash payments. People associated with players targeted in the investigation appeared to be interfering. And Bosch was denying that he had distributed performance enhancers to Rodriguez or other players.
Making little headway, baseball's lawyers then filed a lawsuit in March claiming that Bosch and other individuals connected to the clinic had interfered in baseball's business. Baseball's investigators also decided to pay for information in the case, including $125,000 for documents from the clinic itself - a decision that was criticized and would later be cited by Rodriguez's lawyers as an example of baseball's inappropriate tactics in the Biogenesis investigation.
In June, Bosch, concerned about the lawsuit, agreed to cooperate with baseball, becoming its star witness. That put him on a path to testify against Rodriguez at the arbitration hearing, which ran, with interruptions, through most of October and November and easily outlasted baseball's postseason.
Bosch also provided information that baseball used in suspending 13 other players tied to Biogenesis. All were suspended for 50 games, except for Ryan Braun of the Milwaukee Brewers, who received a 65-game ban. None of those players appealed their penalties.
But Rodriguez did appeal. He had spent much of the 2013 season rehabilitating his hip following surgery in January, and in an odd bit of timing, he played his first game of the season on the day - Aug. 5 - that Selig suspended him. Rodriguez quickly made it clear that he would fight Selig's actions, and in the days that followed the suspension, he bolstered his legal team, adding Joe Tacopina, a well-known criminal defense lawyer, to represent him in his arbitration proceedings.
The arbitration, which was structured much like a trial and was held at baseball's headquarters in Manhattan, took place over 10 days and served as an unusual counterpoint to a postseason in which the Yankees were not participants for just the second time in nearly two decades.
And the hearings themselves almost became a spectacle at times, with Rodriguez supporters gathered outside on the sidewalk in what amounted to a boisterous picket line, while inside Bosch testified, but Rodriguez did not.
As the proceedings went on, the animosity between Rodriguez and Selig appeared to grow. In October, Rodriguez's lawyers filed their lawsuit against baseball and Selig, contending that both had interfered with Rodriguez's business dealings. The suit also condemned baseball's investigative tactics.
In mid-November, Rodriguez's lawyers called on Selig to testify at the hearing. But baseball objected, and Horowitz ruled that Selig would not have to take the stand. An angry Rodriguez then stormed out of the hearing, shouting obscenities.
Rodriguez proceeded to take his case to the radio, telling WFAN, the New York sports-talk station, that he did not have a chance in the hearing, that Selig hated him and that "he was disgusted with this abusive process."
As a result of this process, he now faces another long separation from baseball after playing in just 44 games in 2013. He is fifth on baseball's career list with 654 home runs, just 7 short of moving past Willie Mays into fourth. But in the wake of Horowitz's ruling, it remains to be seen when, and if, he will get to 661.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/sports/baseball/arbitrators-ruling-banishes-the-yankees-alex-rodriguez-for-a-season.html