Report: New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez Hires Top Defense Attorney Joe Tacopina to Battle MLB Against Biogenesis Suspen

When New York Yankees third basemen Alex Rodriguez was suspended 211 games back on August 6 by Major League Baseball for his reported involvement in the Biogenesis case that claims he purchased and used performance enhancing drugs, he vowed to fight the ruling to the end.

His first move was hiring attorney David Cornwell, who was the lawyer for Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun and got his suspension overturned back in 2011 due to a technicality in the process; one that could have gotten Braun a 50-game suspension but instead, was able to get off without a penalty back then.

On Tuesday, the New York Post has learned that Rodriguez has also hired another top attorney to his all-star legal team to combat Major League Baseball and either get his suspension reduced or overturned; in top criminal and defense attorney Joe Tacopina, who has the reputation of being known as "one of the most hated lawyers in New York."

Baseball's Collective Action Problem

The following article is a guest contribution by written by Evan Zepfel.  Zepfel is a Portfolio Management Analyst at PAAMCO, is a graduate of Harvard College, was a member of Harvard’s Varsity Water Polo team and served a sports editor for The Harvard Crimson.

Alex Rodriguez will appeal his 211 game suspension.

On Monday, Major League Baseball announced an extended suspension for Alex Rodriguez in accordance with the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program (JDA) and the 2012-2016 Basic Agreement (CBA).  The suspension is scheduled to last through the 2014 season (including playoffs), meaning that Rodriguez will be ineligible to compete for more than 200 games and lose over $30 million in salary if the suspension is upheld in the appeals process.  However, MLB based the suspension partially on violations of MLB’s drug policy, giving Rodriguez the ability to appeal the suspension and making him eligible to play until the appeals process is complete.

MLB’s JDA specifically delimits penalties related to usage of prohibited substances.  In this case, Rodriguez’s suspension is clearly greater than the pre-determined suspension for the use of a prohibited substance.  According to section 7(A) of the JDA, a player who “tests positive for a Performance Enhancing Substance, or otherwise violates the Program through the use or possession of a Performance Enhancing Substance” for the first time will be subject to a 50 game suspension. 

Losing In A Steroid Culture

Another day out of the year, another performance-enhancing drug test failure by an athlete.  These incidents are more and more common, and only create ripples when a star player is implicated.  The four-game suspension handed out to Seattle Seahawks defensive end Bruce Irvin for Adderall hardly registered outside the Pacific Northwest.

However, it is a disturbing trend for the Seahawks.  Irvin is now the fifth Seahawk suspended for drug use since 2011, and cornerback Richard Sherman narrowly avoided being the sixth.  Irvin, along with Allen Barbre, Brandon Browner, John Moffitt and Winston Guy, have created suspicion among fans on just how clean their team is.

Only the naive would believe that the Seahawks have the only group of players that boost their performance chemically.  Football is a brutal sport and recovering quickly from injury is the difference between the playoffs and watching them from home, and the difference between a multi-million dollar contract, and a veteran's minimum.  When the stakes are this high, players make use out of every advantage they can find.

Irvin tested positive for Adderall, the latest trend among athletes.  It is a psychostimulant and increases awareness and focus.  Prolonged use also causes psychological damage, which is the reason it is a restricted drug in the United States (available only through a prescription).  Analysts speculate that athletes take it alongside a steroid regimen so that if they fail a drug test, they can claim they failed Adderall (which would technically be true) and not have the stigma of a muscle enhancer.

Nationals 3B Ryan Zimmerman Says Nobody Wants To Watch Cheaters

Major League Baseball and it’s performance enhancing drug problem has given the game a black eye and raised suspicions for every player that puts up good statistics year in and year out.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig  is seeking stronger penalties for performance-enhancing drug users, and some players are now voicing their support for the commissioners efforts.

Washington Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman spoke out on the subject recently, and said that “nobody wants to watch cheaters play.”

“If you want harsher penalties, I’m all for that,” Zimmerman told USA TODAY Sports. “Nobody wants to watch cheaters. Those guys make those of us who don’t cheat and use things look worse.
“It’s not fair. It’s tough to play this game when you don’t have any sort of chemical help, and that’s the point of this game. That’s why the season’s so long, and not too many people make it to this level — it’s such a grind physically and mentally. It’s not good for the sport.”

Curt Schilling’s performance-enhancing drug accusations shot down by MLB

Former all-star pitcher Curt Schilling’s recent claim that he was told by the Boston Red Sox to use performance-enhancing drugs (PED) has been shot down by investigators. Major League Baseball and the Red Sox organization looked into the matter and found there was no substance to it. Schilling had said that Mike Reinold, a member of the Red Sox medical team, urged the pitcher to use PEDs to help treat a shoulder injury that he suffered back in 2008.

The accusations were recently made by Schilling to Terry Francona, who was the Red Sox manager at the time, as well as Theo Epstein, who was the club’s Theo Epstein in 2008. However, the investigations proved to be fruitless. Schilling had told Colin Cowherd of ESPN Radio that a member of the Red Sox medical staff suggested that he try taking the illegal substance as one way to help heal his damaged shoulder.

In later interviews, Schilling mentioned Reinold as the person who made the suggestion to him. Reinold was hired by the Red Sox in 2008 as the team’s rehabilitation coordinator. He remained with the club until leaving in 2012. However, according to investigators, Reinold has never been involved with PEDs in the past or the present and they feel the incident simply didn’t take place.

One and done end to PED’s in baseball

The names are easy to remember Gio, Nelson, ARod, and Braun. They are linked together it what has become the Watergate of baseball “The Anthony Bosch’s notebooks.”

Now is the time for Bud Selig to act like a real baseball commissioner.The other three that were implicated:

Melky Cabrera, Bartolo Colon and Yasmani Grandal all took their punishment and each served a 50 games suspension.

Use the power of your position you need to suspend Alex Rodriguez, Nelson Cruz, Gio Gonzalez, and Ryan Braun for the first 50 games of the 2013 season.

Then tell the world that baseball is done with wimpy suspensions.

MLB: As A-Rod’s alleged doping pattern is revealed, MLB turns up heat

(PhatzRadio / SI) — The notebooks reported to belong to Florida wellness clinician Tony Bosch connect New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez to a staggering array of drugs and supplements to be used literally morning, noon and night and through multiple delivery systems, including lozenges, creams and injections. Those notes, parts of which the Miami New Times have published online, provide the road map Major League Baseball investigators have begun to follow.

A contingent of MLB officials met in Miami on Monday with New Times staff members to learn more about the notebooks, how they were acquired, the names of other players not named in the report and the possibility of the New Times turning over those documents.

Investigators also intend to follow Bosch’s notes to see if they lead to corroborating evidence, such as receipts for plane trips and overnight packages, according to a source close to the investigation. The source said investigators also are tracking packages tied to Juan Nunez, a player confidante who formerly worked for agents Sam and Seth Levinson and who was a co-conspirator with Melky Cabrera of a web site scam staged after a failed drug test by Cabrera last year.

New Times editor Chuck Strouse confirmed MLB officials asked for the notebooks and logs but that the publication had not yet decided about how to respond to the request. “We are deliberating,” he said.

Strouse said the publication has received only one response from legal representatives of any of the named persons in the report — and that was what he termed an “aggressive letter” questioning whether the report violated federal HIPAA laws, which are designed to protect patient privacy under care of health care providers.

And if you believe that, I have a bridge I’m looking to sell.

Or “Methinks he doth protest too much.”

I feel sorry for a lot of today’s celebrities, especially athletes. After years of (self?) denial, Lance Armstrong admitted he used performance enhancing drugs. Ballplayer after ballplayer swears on a stack of bibles that he’s clean, only to have the evidence turn out to prove him “misstating.” The fact that not one player was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame must indicate something. (Political prognosticator Nate Silver takes a calculated look at the results.)

Sammy Sosa Is CEO Of Company That Distributes Needle-Free Injection System

I had to jump on this story as soon as I saw it.  I can only imagine the looks on people’s faces when they read this.  Via a tweet from Crossing Broad, and doing some research of my own on the company’s website, former Chicago Cubs slugger, and ambassador of baseball’s steroid error, Sammy Sosa is the CEO and investor of a company that distributes needle-free injection systems.

The irony of a guy who may have shot steroids with a needle having the business acumen to invest in a company that can make using needles pain-free.   Sosa and the company released this press release. 

Major League Baseball toughens up its drug-testing policy

According to Major League Baseball, the league will begin testing players for usage of human growth hormone (HGH) this season as a way to detect higher than normal testosterone levels. Last season, baseball payers could be asked for blood samples throughout spring training last year, but this year the testing will run for the entire regular season. In addition, urine testing will also be held to help detect other types of performance-enhancing drugs (PED). The Major League Baseball Players’ Association has agreed to the new testing system.

Each player’s test records will be kept by the World Anti-Doping Agency at its headquarters in Quebec, Canada. Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, said this is a great and proud day for MLB and the league will continue to be a leader in the fight against illegal substance usage. The announcement of the drug testing comes right after suspected PED users, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens failed to earn enough votes to gain induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Selig said that baseball has come a long way in the sport’s fight against drugs. He said MLB has evolved greatly in this area over the past 15 years. Random drug testing was introduced by the league back in 2003 and punishment was handed out the following year for those who failed their tests. The league started coming down hard on PED abusers in 2006 when it lengthened suspensions to 50 games from just 10 days for first-time offenders. The amount of drug testing has now increased in MLB over the past 10 years and each ballplayer will have to undergo at least one test this year.

Baseball Misses Mark on HOF 2013 Vote

Any fan of baseball, including writers with votes for the Hall Of Fame, should have been rooting for contemporary inductees in this year's ballots.

Unfortunately, it did not happen.

MLB lost an opportunity to shine the light on some outstanding players from recent times and from a couple decades back.

For all that baseball has gone through over the past 15 years, the steroids scandals, the overpaid salaries, the empty ballparks late in the season and the general decline in popularity versus football and basketball, it could have benefited greatly by providing a theater for deserving players, ones who will most likely make it in future years, anyways.

The message is loud and clear.  McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, Clemens and Palmeiro don't get a Hall pass.

But, Craig Biggio and Mike Piazza, two impacting players, who lasted a very long time, should have made it this year.  Tim Raines and Jack Morris are two players from a generation prior that should also have made it.

Steroids In The Hall And Beyond

Steroids and the Baseball Hall of Fame just don't mesh well. Steroids in baseball paint a picture of shady cheaters, selling out their bodies, integrity, morals, honor, and self-respect in dark corners of clubhouses around the USA, aided by equally-as-shady trainers and suppliers. The Baseball Hall of Fame in

Cooperstown is everything that is right with sports; legends inhabiting the halls of a grand museum in a romantic little city, a destination for tourists, fans, and people who seek a wave of majestic nostalgia from America's pastime.

Steroids and the hall, though polar opposites, were always destined for a meeting once Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa captivated the sports world with their highway home-run chases in the early 2000's. Baseball sold its soul when it let PEDs run rampant in the game. Although the sport is recovering, this year's hall of fame ballot sends the sport back to a time when the powers of the MLB turned a blind eye to the steroids that helped hit home runs, put butts in seats, and finally drive baseball past its pre-lockout popularity.

This is the first year of hall of fame eligibility for the likes of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza, and Sammy Sosa, and players with checkered pasts such as Mark McGwire, Jeff Bagwell, and Rafael Palmero remain on the ballot from 2012. It's unavoidable. We'll find out soon enough if baseball's journalists feel the stars of the steroid era deserve to be immortalized, but the road to that decision for many of those writers, and the people that call themselves fans of the game, has been, is, and will be difficult, toying with the very basis of our ideas about right and wrong, just and cruel, fair and unfair, in sports and life as a whole.

Lawmaker: NFL players ‘trying to back out’ on HGH

NFLPA head DeMaurice Smith disagreed with the NFL’s ruling on the Saints bounty case Tuesday

WASHINGTON (AP) — Accusing the NFL players’ union of “trying to back out” of an August 2011 agreement to start checking for human growth hormone, a congressman worried aloud Wednesday that the league will head into next season without a test for the banned drug.

“Hopefully as we move down the line, players will see how incredibly ridiculous it looks for them not to … straighten this thing out,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s ranking Democrat. “We’re now getting ready to go into a third season, and it does not look very good.”

The panel held a hearing to examine the science behind the testing, and heard from experts that it is reliable.

“No test is perfect … but there hasn’t been a single false positive,” U.S. Anti-Doping Agency Chief Science Officer Larry Bowers testified.

While the latest, 10-year labor contract paved the way for HGH testing in professional football once certain parameters were set, the NFL Players Association wants a new study before it will agree to the validity of a test used by Olympic sports and Major League Baseball. The sides haven’t been able to agree on a scientist to help resolve that impasse.

Hall of Fame Morals

When it comes to the Baseball Hall of Fame, they need to either change the record books, or let in everybody that cheated.

Roger Clemens‘ HOF vote is up next, and that is when we’ll really see who gets in and who is left outside looking in with Pete Rose.

Watching Clemens when he was in New Britain, CT in 1983, there was talent on the mound that had Cooperstown in my mind instantaneously.

That day when he threw a shutout to win the Eastern League Championship, I said “someday I will see him win the World Series for Boston.” When I went to Game Six in 1986, my dream was close to coming true.

He won 192 games in a Red Sox uniform and nobody has worn his number 21 since he left for Toronto in 1997.

The greatest pitcher in Red Sox history, and he threw it all away for a syringe a decade later.

How could using PED’s in the 1995-2007 era be any different than those that used greenies from the 50?s until 2011?

How The Melky Cabrera Chaos Is Affecting ACES Baseball Agency

August 5, 2012; Denver, CO, USA; San Francisco Giants left fielder Melky Cabrera (53) hits a single during the fifth inning against the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field. Credit: Chris Humphreys-US PRESSWIRE

It has been well-documented that Melky Cabrera, who has been suspended 50 games for use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) is a client of ACES baseball agency, a company owned and managed by brothers Sam and Seth Levinson, and that the company has been under investigation since it was discovered that a person associated with the agency (Juan Nunez) may have been involved in an attempt to cover-up Cabrera’s drug use.  Also noted by many in the baseball industry is that ACES recently lost clients Nyjer Morgan and Shane Victorino; however, at least one writer says that the Victorino move may be completely unrelated to the investigation of Melky Cabrera.

Yesterday, Maury Brown wrote an article that appeared on Baseball Prospectus titled, The Strange Case of Melky Cabrera Spills Over to His Agency.  What is most interesting about Brown’s coverage of the issue is that he highlights the October 2010 MLBPA Regulations Governing Player Agents and the Association’s creation of an Agent Advisory Committee as a “sounding board” for the new regulations.  That committee is made up of nine Player Agents, and according to Brown, one of the Levinson brothers may be on the panel.

“In October of 2010, the MLBPA rolled out a policy by which anyone who worked with a player agency and had contact with a player would only have access to limited MLBPA certification. The MLBPA was noticing problems with “runners,” such as Nunez, who had relationships with players but were not certified as agents. The union felt they had the right to regulate the conduct of those working with players, even if that person was not actually an agent but merely in contact through an agency.

At nearly the same time, the union created an Agent Advisory Committee as a sounding board. The nine-member committee is a cross-section of the agent base. Some of the agents on the board are high-profile, while others are small. No agency is on the board, but rather agents within them. With agents spread all over the country representing small and the large agencies, the committee provides feedback to the union. The term—just now ending for the agents presently on the committee—is two years, but not all the panel will be rotated out to allow continuity. As an interesting sidebar, according to sources, one of the Levinsons is on the advisory panel. There is no word as to which one and whether he will remain when the new term begins.”

It is too early to tell how all of this will affect the Levinsons and their practice.  However, if the pending investigation uncovers facts that reveals ACES was involved in the Cabrera scam or worse, that the Levinson brothers acted as an intermediary between former MLB catcher Paul Lo Duca and a PED distributor, the consequences could be dire.  In the meantime, the Levinsons have maintained their innocence.

How The Melky Cabrera Chaos Is Affecting ACES Baseball Agency from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

Darren Heitner

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