The Alex Rodriguez issue never goes away. Make that plural – issues. There seem to be enough of them, a ceaseless string of issues, so that there is always at least one on the table.
This week’s issue of choice is the agreement that Rodriguez has with the New York Yankees under which he could earn up to $30 million in marketing payments on top of the guaranteed $61 million he is owed for the last three years of his 10-year, $275 million contract.
When the Yankees gave Rodriguez that contract and the home-run bonuses in 2007, they desperately wanted him to stay with them after he had opted out of his 10-year, $252 million contract.
To be accurate, I should say it was Hank Steinbrenner who wanted A-Rod back. Hank was running the team in place of his principal-owner father as senior vice president while his younger brother Hal served as executive vice president of Yankee Global Enterprises.
Within the next year, Hank stumbled down the corporate ladder, and Hal had replaced him at the top, bringing a more stabled and conservative leadership to the vaunted organization.
But the Yankees were stuck with A-Rod’s contract, and they came to regret it, especially when the star slugger was unveiled as the star steroids slugger and missed all of last season under MLB suspension.
It is the latter A-Rod whom the Yankees seek to deprive of his marketing payments. I call them payments rather than bonuses because MLB doesn’t allow teams to give players bonuses for hitting a certain number of home runs or driving in a certain number of runs or striking out a certain number of batters.
As described by a lawyer familiar with the Yankees’ thinking and planning when they devised the marketing plan, “the idea was if he hit these milestones they’d have a joint promotion where they could have events and sell merchandise. A-Rod would get $6 million and the Yankees would get everything else.”
The plan called for Rodriguez to get $6 million each if and when he hit career home run No. 660 (tying Willie Mays), 714 (tying Babe Ruth), 755 (tying Henry Aaron), 762 (tying Barry Bonds) and 763 (surpassing Bonds with the most lifetime homers in history).
The Yankees’ thinking, however, has changed because of Rodriguez’s admitted use of performance-enhancing drugs and his 2014 suspension. They feel that he fraudulently induced them to agree to the marketing deal by hiding the fact that he hit home runs chemically aided.
If Rodriguez, who ranks fifth on the career list with 654, hits 6 home runs, the Yankees do not plan to give him $6 million or market his feat. Their thinking is the same for the four other $6 million milestones.
The Yankees don’t seem to want A-Rod to play let alone hit home runs. Without waiting to see if he can play after a year off, they have declared Chase Headley their third baseman and suggested that A-Rod can scrounge for playing time as the designated hitter.
The Yankees certainly don’t seem interested in having Rodriguez help them win. The interesting aspect of his playing is that given his circumstances – missing a year and soon to turn 40 years old – he is more likely to hit home runs occasionally than hit for average.
If he plays enough and hits six home runs, A-Rod would have $6 million due him. By withholding that payment, the Yankees would force Rodriguez to pursue it through the grievance procedure. They are confident that they could make a strong case before the impartial arbitrator, Frederic Horowitz, but I’m not sure anyone else thinks so. One lawyer told me he doesn’t think Major League Baseball would even agree with the Yankees’ position.
MLB decisions, in fact, actually work against the Yankees. For years, Commissioner Bud Selig said, when asked that he would not change or act on any statistics achieved by players who subsequently admitted to having used or were found to have used steroids.
Bonds was the most obvious reason for the questions. When he broke Aaron’s career home run record, Selig was in the perfect position to act to preserve the record of his good and longtime friend. But he didn’t, instead saying that if baseball changed any statistical records, where would it stop?
If Bonds’ home runs were changed, what would that do to the San Francisco Giants’ won-lost record? Would the Giants have to relinquish wins in games that Bonds’ homered? Why just home runs? Why not singles and doubles?
No matter what anyone thinks about the massive home run total Bonds amassed in a five-year span near the end of his career, those home runs remain on his record. The inclusion of money shouldn’t affect A-Rod’s home run total if MLB won’t change it. MLB’s lack of action against anyone else’s statistics stands as a strong precedent for Rodriguez.
The Yankees can argue all they want that Rodriguez’s home runs were tainted, but they were listed in the Yankees’ own media guide last year and presumably will be there this year.
The agreement between Rodriguez and the Yankees talks about the things the player and the team could do together in marketing ventures. Before they could do anything, though, the Yankees would have to designate the achievement as a milestone.
The Yankees’ concern is even if they were to designate, say, homer No. 660, a milestone, fans would be cynical and not treat it as it might otherwise have been without steroids.
“There would be nothing to market,” said the lawyer familiar with the Yankees’ thinking and the agreement.
If Rodriguez hit 763 home runs, “could they market it as a valid record? What are they paying for? Who’s going to think it’s legitimate? It’s not automatic. The agreement says the Yankees have to declare it a milestone.”
If the Yankees did not designate a contractual home run as a milestone, Rodriguez would have the right to file a grievance. Though I haven’t seen the agreement, I am told that if A-Rod does file a grievance, the only thing the arbitrator could decide is did the Yankees act reasonably by not declaring the home run a milestone.
The arbitrator, on the other hand, could find that restriction on his authority improper.
David Prouty, the union’s general counsel, said he knows only what he has read in newspapers about the case. “No one has contacted the union to discuss it,” he said, adding that he didn’t expect either side to file a grievance before events unfold.
“It’s not the practice of either side to file anticipatory grievances, so when the issue is ripe, that’s the time to file a grievance,” Prouty said.
But he added, “The Players Association would support Rodriguez. Every player who has a contract we would help him enforce it.”
Although the Yankees seem to be looking to save money, they are also concerned that they wouldn’t be able to make money from the so-called milestones. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time they squandered millions on a player.
“If it’s worthless, it’s worthless,” said Richard Moss, a long-time agent and the union’s first general counsel dating to 1966. Moss won many grievances in his tenure, including the Messersmith-McNally free agency case and the Catfish Hunter breach-of-contract case.
Although Moss hadn’t seen the agreement, I asked him if he thought the Yankees had any chance of succeeding with their argument. “Absolutely not,” he said. “It’s an additional penalty. They’ve already dealt with that.”
Even if it’s a separate contract? “I don’t see why it should matter. It’s a matter of contract law.”