A-Rod out all of 2014

New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez was barred for 162 games and the 2014 postseason, the longest suspension for doping in baseball history, after an arbitrator upheld most of the punishment sought by Major League Baseball.

The ruling, announced Saturday by Fredric Horowitz, baseball’s chief arbitrator, fell short of the initial 211-game suspension but may mean that Rodriguez, the highest-paid player in the sport, who has been hobbled by injuries, will never play another game.

The suspension 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 reaffirmed, and lengthy, suspension of Rodriguez, one of the best players of his generation, 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,” Major League Baseball 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.”

Rodriguez criticized the ruling in a statement released by his publicist 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 all of the $25 million that the Yankees were obligated to pay him for the 2014 season.

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 when he is eligible to return. If he can’t return, he could opt for a disability retirement that guarantees his money.

Major League Baseball did not make public Horowitz’s written decision, which was given to the parties and presumably includes his rationale for upholding most of the suspension. The players union, which was involved in representing Rodriguez in the arbitration, said it “strongly disagrees” with the decision.

The union said in a statement, however, that it recognized “that a final and binding decision has been reached.”

Rodriguez and his team of legal advisers will probably try to appeal Horowitz’s decision in the courts, or to at least 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.

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 employers and the employees’ union.

Selig suspended Rodriguez in August, citing his “use and possession of numerous forms of prohibited, performance-enhancing substances” over many years. Rodriguez, who admitted to having used performance enhancers more than 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 launched an investigation into Biogenesis of America, a now-defunct southern Florida anti-aging clinic. The Miami New Times, a weekly newspaper, reported that it had 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.

In June, Bosch, concerned about the lawsuit, agreed to cooperate with Major League Baseball, becoming its star witness and putting him on a path to testify against Rodriguez at his arbitration hearing, which ran, with interruptions, through most of October and November and easily outlasted baseball’s postseason.

Sports, Pages 19 on 01/12/2014

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