60 Minutes A-Rod Story
 

Anyone catch the A-Rod story on 60 Minutes?

Steroids dealer Tony Bosch claims that A-Rod's "associates" initially tried to bribe him to leave the country and then texted his ex-girlfriend threatening to kill Bosch if he snitched.

Bud Selig and MLB COO Rob Manfred also were interviewed in the report and went after A-Rod claiming he is a liar, a fraud and committed an unprecedented attempt to hide his actions.

Very interesting.

Everyone in that entire story is a slimeball. A-Roid, the roid dealer, A-Roid's lawyer, Bud the Pud, Bud's henchmen, Bud's lawyers, they all suck. The whole thing reeks.

I wish people would just stop talking about A-Rod.

I agree. The only good thing about the whole story is that it cost A-Rod $25 million

A-Rod is a POS and it is to bad he wasn't banned permanently.

If baseball had non-guaranteed contracts like football, MLB/Yankees could probably find a convenient way to release A-Rod and it is doubtful any team would pick him up.

Also it seems like the MLB Players Association is siding with MLB management against A-Rod.

Instead of ARod "bribing" Bosch, MLB did it instead and got him to change his story entirely. So much better.

This entire farce is nothing more than a $25,000,000 bailout of the Yankees. You think they do this for the Royals? Hell no.

Making this seemingly arbitrary decision of 162 games also saved the Yankees $25M. No surprise there.

Compelling stuff!

ARod sucks!

This. About every post in this thread so far

At what point does the media stop talking about this over the hill douche?

A-Rod offered him more.

What makes a 1 season ban arbitrary?

Because their agreement with the players designates 50, 100, and lifetime suspensions for PED use. What the hell is 162 games based on (other than saving that $25M for the NYY and getting him out of baseball for a year for PR purposes)?

How do you know? Seems like Bosch is the type of guy who would take the greater offer.

I am sure part of the suspension was about him going to great lengths to cover everything up. I bet the Commissioner has wide latitude in regards to that just like Goodell does.

I wish the Chefs would care enough to juice! We don't cheat, we don't tape, and we don't juice, so it's no surprise why we can't compete with players/teams who do.

Which makes the 162 (and the 211 awarded that came before it) a completely arbitrary decision with no precedent.

So was Braun's 65 game suspension

I agree. But that decision was a mutual one.

Mediator - parties agreed to the decision, baseball gets him out for a year right away instead of dragging out the appeal process. A-roid avoids a lifetime ban or the longer suspension, and holds out hope.

Meanwhile he can play outside MLB to stay in shape, show teams what he still has left in the tank, and prays some team will take his brokeass on their 25 man roster.

With his bum hip, other various injuries, and off the juice, he's a prime candidate for being injury prone and declining numbers at the plate. He's already a bit of a liability in the field, and I hope no club even gives him a whiff of interest, so he can fall off the face of the Earth.

ya everybody seems dirty actually

I'm sure Selig would love to blackball him out of the game like Barry Bonds. It will probably be considerably easier to do so because, unlike the 2007 version of Barry, ARod isn't still one of the best hitters in baseball.

They should make it that your first positive test knocks you out for a whole year. A second test and you are out for good.

Baseball is one big pile of shit these days and they need to step it up a notch if they want the sport to ever be looked at as pure again. If it ever was.

Double standard.
Baseball players do steroids they are evil in football it's meh.

I'm not sure football would be quite as good without steroids.

i dont know what the **** you have been watching, but that shit we see on sunday's now is NOT a good product. Its getting worse and worse

Can A-Rod play Free Safety?
If so, sign him up... .

Bosch did everything but jizz himself in that interview. He and Bonds are birds of a feather.

ARod needs a vacation.

One of the guys who works for me is a huge Yankees fan and he was saying that A-Rod CAN play for an independent league club during his suspension. Now wouldn't THAT be a hoot? I think he should do it...

My grandfather said that after Joe Jackson was banned he saw him playing in the minors under a different name. He had lost a step, but his swing was unforgettable.

T-Bones need 3B help?

Why would I waste time listening to a criminal accuse other people of cheating?

cause it's the song of your your people

Even after a full year suspension, A-Rod will have 3-years and $61 million left on his guaranteed contract with the Yankees.

I would most-certainly attend a baker's dozen games if the T-Bones made that happen!

That isn't all that important. What IS important is that the Yankees aren't over the salary cap this year. That resets the clock on number of consecutive seasons over the cap and saves them a shitload going forward.

It is important in the context of the quoted statement, which involves the idea of A-Rod looking for a job after his suspension is over.

And it's still no guarantee that the Yankees will be under the threshold.

The Yankees are far from a complete team, right now. They are reportedly one of the finalists for Tanaka, which will cost them close to $20 million and guarantee that they go over the luxury tax.

The NY Post currently has them at $153.5 million with only 14 players contributing to that number and notes that they have to add roughly $16 million for insurance/pensions and in-season minor-leage call ups. That number also doesn't count arbitration eligible players like Gardner, Nunez, Robertson and Nova (about $6.5 million at minimum - MLBTR has it projected at over $12 million). That puts the Yankees at roughly $176 million with more holes to fill.

$10 million is more than enough to sign 8 players but probably not enough to make them a contender. $4.5 million means that the Yankees are toast and are better off signing Tanaka and forgetting the cap. That's also only taking the 25-man roster into account and not the 40.

<=== Does not give a **** about steroids in baseball.

There is no cap in baseball. Did the kc owners tell you that?

Knowledge is your friend. There is a soft cap with a luxury tax penalty above $189MM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_tax_%28sports%29

It is not a cap and teams like ny boston la pay the luxury tax like its a parking ticket.

The $20MM posting fee does not count towards the luxury tax. There are several stories out saying that if they get Tanaka on a backloaded deal, they can still fill out their roster with cheap players and squeek under the $189MM limit.

I agree that they can't stay under that soft cap AND field a contender in 2014, but I think they are willing to punt 2014 with an eye towards going wild the next couple seasons.

The 50, 100, and lifetime suspensions are for failed tests, I believe. A-Rod technically never failed a test, hence the non-standard suspension.

Braun's suspension was abnormal also because his suspension wasn't for a failed test (he beat that suspension). His was a plea deal, basically and that's what was agreed to.

As far as the powers that be in NY are concerned, it is a hard cap for them this year. Old man Steinbrenner probably would not have cared about paying a ton of luxury tax, but his sons do.

I can understand you not knowing if you don't care about and don't follow baseball, but its been a pretty big story for months that the Yankees are going to move heaven, earth, and hell to stay under the soft cap this season.

Doing so for even just one season will save them a HUGE amount of money in later seasons when they blow through the luxury tax threshold.

It was a very informative interview by 60 minutes. I had no idea that the timing could be important and they had such a menu of drugs.

That Bosch guy accusing virtually everyone in baseball of being dirty was a little unfair and over the top. He is a real slime ball.

I know that the posting fee won't count, but most people guess that Tanaka's future deal will be worth over $100 million and possibly between $17-22 million per year.

And that's not how the luxury cap threshold works. MLB averages out the entire contract and asses the tax by average value. That is why A-Rod's salary cap number was 27.5 even though he would have made $25 million this year.

They can spend whatever they want, it's only limited by how much they want to spend. Geez, I really feel bad for the Yankees having to stretch their budget in order to field a competitive team.

/Me, Royals fan

I would seriously love for the yanks to get butt raped on this. They've had a financial advantage over almost everyone for years, which is what allowed them to sign ARod to such a bloated deal in the first place. Sorry it backfired, they can choke on it.

It's all on the up and up, so it must be fine, right?

Nobody feels sorry for them, but just because their owner cares about baseball and winning a billion times more than ours, can you really get mad at them?

They only have to get under 189 for one season to reset their tax. I fully expect their payroll to blow way past 200MM in 2015, maybe even a quarter-billion.

This. ____ the Yankees.

You should consider figuring out what you're talking about before posting.

That is not the point we were discussing. Obviously, they can spend whatever they want. But ownership has claimed that they want to control spending and the best way for them to do that is to get under the luxury threshold and reset the tax penalty.

It is stupid for them to spend $190 million and field a team that is uncompetitive. If they are going to go over the threshold once again, they should be all in on Tanaka because they desperately need starting pitching.

It is useless to bring in someone like Ervin Santana and continue to lose while spending atrocious amounts of money, but obviously they arent going to throw in the towel because of an imaginary budgetary constraint.

As a Royals fan, you should hope that the Yankees miss out on Tanaka and continue to overpay mediocre/over the hill players. They will suck this year and then we get the pleasure of watching them pay A-Rod $60 million more and limp towards his contractual incentives.

So it was a completely arbitrary decision, yes.

I thinks that means he has to play for the Royals next year... Woot!!!!!!!!!!!

Well to be fair, they have solid evidence that he used steroids in 2010, 2011, and 2012. We already know he used in 2001-2003. (We'll ignore the fact that he likely used every year of his entire career since there's no proof of it) If those last 3 were all positive tests, it would be a lifetime ban.

With the evidence that baseball uncovered, we don't need a positive test to ban A-Rod for one full season.

edit: apparently the commissioner's office broke it down this way, for 3 seperate and distinct violations: 50 games for testosterone, 50 games for IGF-1, 50 games for HGH, and they tacked on the last 12 for obstruction.

When will ARod speak? When Lance Armstrong says he should ?

I don't think "mad" at them is the right word exactly, but the situation does kind of tick me off. I don't know if their owners care about winning a billion times more than ours, but I do know that their local radio and TV deals are worth a billion times more than ours though. It's not like the $ the Yank owners are spending on payroll is coming out of their personal funds.

Did I hear correctly when they said that they had gummy bears with ped's?

Meh, that's just an excuse. JC, our owner is reported as not even spending all that he gets from the league through the luxury tax. If he does, that's all he's spending.

Either way, I guess I'm not going to blame Gotham because they have a lot of people and many of them follow their local team. If the Royals would prime the pump and spend a LOT more for a few years, perhaps we'd be super awesome and the smaller town would show up in more force, and the local, regional and national following would grow. That being said, I'd love a salary cap, but I don't think we'll ever see it, too many large-market teams like it the way it is because more often than not, it makes them competitive.

The bottom line is Wal-Mart won't do that. He's not that much of a man, he's Wal-Mart and being a cheap-ass in ingrained in his non-resident owner DNA. And again, not living here makes it all the simpler to **** over the fans. Just like another team we all know and love.

WTF are you talking about? My point is in football there is a cap and you can not exceed it. In baseball it is a CHOICE if NY stays under 189 M. Nothing stops them from going over. Would they get penalized with luxury tax yes. But again NOTHING in the rules of baseball stops them from going over 189.
THERE IS NO SALARY CAP IN BASEBALL.

I don't mean to defend David Glass at all, but he does have a far smaller revenue stream to work from. The Royals could sell out every single game and it would be a drop in the bucket. Simply because of the population in their area, the Yanks have a monster local radio and TV contract that the Royals could never, ever compete with.

It truly is inherently unfair, so if the Yanks end up getting screwed by one of these huge contracts that the Royals and most other teams could not even consider doing, I would kind of like that.

The number of people in the listening/view area are merely potential. Look at teams in L.A. that don't do well, nobody tunes in. So yes, they have a lot of people, but those "lot of people" have a quality product to follow and be interested in.

Without Glass opening the books it's pretty clear that we're all left to guess, but I think from the things we do know (what he's getting from the luxury tax), and what he's paying in salary, he's prolly putting less money into it than before.

Glass is cheap, and a ****ing bastard, so yeah he's running away with the profit. Add to that the common knowledge that he was the force in Wal-Mart that was all for keeping labor costs down, and I'm sure he's sickened by the notion that these under-educated snobs are making more than $15 an hour. It's just in his DNA to cheat labor of rthe glory of the company and it's owners/investors.

OK, market size makes no difference, it doesn't impact local TV and radio revenues and has no correlation to payroll. Not sure what I was thinking.

There is no precedent for any of this. It's a completely arbitrary breakdown outside of the drug agreement the players made as part of the CBA (if you ignore the fact that it conveniently saves the NYY a full year of ARod's salary and keeps him away from baseball for a full year).

The arbitrator's judgement was apparently attached to A-Rod's federal lawsuit, so everyone can now read it.

Apparently all parties, MLB, the union, and A-Rod's lawyers all agreed that the section of the rules that spelled out the 50 game, 100 game, and lifetime ban punishments did not apply. They all agreed that a different section applied where the commissioner can suspend a player for just cause due to violating the drug agreement absent a positive test, but that section does not have a specifically required penalty spelled out.

The union and A-Rod's lawyers argued that if there is any penalty at all, it should be treated the same as one positive test and it should only be 50 games.

MLB argued that there was no mandated penalty, and given the severity of the violation and the cover-up, the 211 games they wanted was fair.

The arbitrator said its true that the 50 games do not apply here, but its still useful as a benchmark. He also flatly rejected the argument that it should be treated as one single violation because it was 3 seperate banned substances taken over 3 seperate years, and there was already a precedent for punishing a first-time use for both of 2 different substances. (so instead of saying its all one violation, the precedent says you can say 50 games for this, 50 games for that)

So, its 50 games for each of 3 banned substances, plus a few more for the cover-up (which they also have a precedent for punishing), all backed by plenty of precedent. The only thing thats new is the total number of games, but we've also never had a player come up for using 3 different PED's over many years and then trying to block an investigation.

There's nothing backed by precedent about a 162 game suspension for PED use in the sport of baseball. It's entirely new territory no matter how anybody attempts to explain the reasoning behind the punishment.

This statement is simply flat-out wrong.

There is precedent for punishing a player for 50 games even without a positive test. Check.

There is precedent for punishing a player for a first-time use for two different kinds of substances and having the punishments run consecutively instead of concurrently. Check.

There is precedent for punishing for a cover-up. Check.

Your only objection seems to be that 162 games is too convenient of a number (which was the arbitrator's call by the way, Selig wanted no hard limits, and 211 games), but what if it was 175, and they said 25 games for the cover-up instead of 12? Then its suddenly ok? Why couldn't they just round it to one season and call it good?

It isn't. There has never been a 162 game suspension for PED use in MLB, nor is there anything in the CBA that designates a 162 game suspension for PED use in MLB. Not sure how that could even be argued.

When had that been done before?

They didn't tack on any extra games for Melky Cabrera's PED suspension in 2012 when he had a fake website made to cover up his use. What's the difference here?

My objection is they broke entirely new ground here with this suspension (but yes, that giving a player an entire season for PED use, which had never been done before, is rather convenient for the league/NYY).

A former lawyer's analysis of the decision: http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/20...unting-to-150/

Usually you don't cry like this!

It matters in some respects, but it's not the only part of the equation. But if you're honest, you admit that it helps, but even a shitty team in a big city is doomed in many cases.

Are you sure you not just totally devoted to Glass...