Is it possible to pick a favorite in the looming bonus battle between Alex Rodriguez and the New York Yankees? I don’t mean who the likely winner would be but who, in your opinion, the winner should be.
I admit it’s hard to root for either one, but if there is a grievance and an arbitration hearing, someone’s going to win and someone’s going to lose. Don’t base your opinion on what the arbitrator, Frederic Horowitz, might do; arbitrators are completely unpredictable. Ask baseball officials and club owners. They have lost significant cases they were certain they were going to win, free agency, for example.
I’ve thought about it and without seeing the contract and how it is worded, I can’t predict a winner. And if there was a way both sides could lose, I’d be for that to happen. But one of them is going to win so whom would I like to see in that position?
I would go for Rodriguez. Yes, he cheated and lied and behaved horribly, including faking his way out of testifying in his appeal of his year-long suspension. But the Yankees do not have clean hands and a pure heart in matters of performance-enhancing drugs and other matters. I can cite a library shelf full of examples but will recall only a few:
Exhibit A: the Yankees’ signing of Jason Giambi as a free agent for 7 years and $120 million in 2001.
Giambi was a widely suspected PED user and, in fact, testified before the federal grand jury investigating Balco, the notorious West Coast lab that was linked to Barry Bonds, among others.
In February 2005 I learned – and wrote for The New York Times – that the Yankees had agreed to Giambi’s request to include no mention of steroid use in the contract’s guarantee language.
The Yankees, I wrote, based on unquestionable information, “acquiesced to his request and removed all references to steroids from the guarantee language routinely included in contracts.” They never questioned his request or asked why.
The team’s blatant willingness to ignore an obvious steroids situation tells you what was important to its officials, a common front-office malady at the time. Having Giambi in their lineup was more important than his steroids use so they relinquished their right to get out of the contract or convert it to a non-guaranteed deal if Giambi were subsequently found to use steroids.
The person who told me about Giambi’s request also said no other words were deleted from the contract.
The best part of the story occurred the day it appeared in the paper. I received a telephone call from three Yankees executives – Randy Levine, the president; Lonn Trost, the chief operating officer, and Brian Cashman, the general manager.
“Unequivocally, the Yankees had no knowledge of Jason Giambi doing steroids,” Levine said, adding, “We just wanted to respond to your article and take issue with some of the things.”
“There were at least 20 changes made,” Trost said, referring to the guarantee-language provision in Giambi’s contract. A day earlier, Trost said he couldn’t discuss Giambi’s contract specifically. On this call, he discussed it specifically, concluding, “To say we didn’t cover steroids is absolutely fallacious.”
The executives never did comment on the core issue, Giambi’s request that steroids be removed, and didn’t explain why they didn’t ask why. But Cashman said, “Modifications take place in almost every contract. It’s rare when an agent takes our initial draft and says, ‘Fine.'”
The point is the Yankees didn’t have to ask why; they knew why and they didn’t care. Giambi, incidentally, told a federal grand jury in December 2003 that he used steroids and human growth hormone and later admitted it publicly.
Exhibit B: the Yankees’ reaction to the 1992 lifetime suspension of their relief pitcher Steve Howe.
Then Commissioner Fay Vincent, acting after Howe pleaded guilty to trying to obtain cocaine, suspended him for life, bringing to seven the number of times he had been suspended for drug and/or alcohol abuse. That’s seven, as in one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Howe, of course, filed a grievance, and three members of the Yankees’ hierarchy quickly went to his defense: general manager Gene Michael, manager Buck Showalter and vice president Jack Lawn, who was the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The crux of their testimony was that baseball’s drug policy was wrong and that Howe should not have been barred permanently. Can you imagine a drug czar testifying in that way in today’s PED culture?
Why did Lawn and the others testify on Howe’s behalf and, as happened, jeopardize their jobs for criticizing baseball’s drug policy? They didn’t admit it, but it was Howe’s two-season effectiveness that prompted their position.
In 37 games in 1991, Howe had a 1.68 earned run average. In 1992, in 20 games before his suspension, Howe, a 34-year-old left-hander, had a 2.45 e.r.a., allowing runs in only four games.
As with Giambi, the Yankees acted in what they saw was their best interest, below board though it might have been.
Exhibit C: their treatment of players who lie about their age.
In 2001, the Yankees signed a Cuban defector, third baseman Andy Morales. They had high hopes for him, but he turned out to be a bust. He wasn’t even good enough to play in the minors. When they realized what they had overpaid for, the Yankees conveniently discovered that Morales had lied about his age and was older than he had represented.
They terminated the contract, saying he had gained it under false pretenses. They did not, however, terminate the contract of Orlando Hernandez, also a Cuban defector but a winning pitcher, even though everyone knew he was four years older than he said he was.
WILL GRIEVANCE FOLLOW NO. 660?
For Alex Rodriguez, May Day was Mays Day.
Rodriguez slugged his 660th home run May 1, tying Willie Mays for fourth on the all-time list. That was the home run that was supposed to trigger a $6 million marketing bonus from the Yankees. Instead, the May 1 homer triggered a 30-day period for Rodriguez to file a grievance against the Yankees for not giving him the bonus.
There may be a difference of a few days, depending on when the non-payment clock started. It also is not known if Rodriguez will file a grievance. The Yankees are confident he will not. They feel he won’t want to testify because he would have to answer lots of questions about his use of steroids.
On the other hand, Rodriguez has already admitted use of steroids and having to admit it again might not inhibit him.
The Yankees also feel the language in their agreement with Rodriguez enables them to do what they are or aren’t doing.
“We have the right but not the obligation to do something, and that’s it,” said Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ general manager. “We’re going to follow the contract as we follow all contracts, so there is no dispute, from our perspective.”
A union official said the issue isn’t as simple or straightforward as Cashman claims.
The Yankees’ view is they can declare five Rodriguez home runs (660, 714, 755, 762, 763) milestones for marketing purposes but don’t have to as long as they have acted in good faith. There seems to be a lot of room for dispute in that vague area of “good faith,” but the Yankees believe they know Rodriguez’s link to steroids makes it impossible to market the home runs.
They obviously haven’t tried to market #660, but presumably they have discussed the matter with marketing experts and have been told it’s not marketable. However, Yankee Stadium fans have enthusiastically responded to Rodriguez’s surprising performance this season so maybe the Yankees could be surprised by a marketing venture.
Without seeing the contract, I can’t make an independent judgment, but I am skeptical that it is as clear-cut as the Yankees claim. In fact, the Yankees’ blatantly bad treatment of Rodriguez and their virtually ignoring his positive performance and what he has meant to the team this season could be used against them in a grievance battle.
WILLIE MAYS AND GREENIES
If the Yankees don’t want to recognize A-Rod’s No. 660 as a milestone, how should we view all 660 Willie Mays hit? What if he was fueled by amphetamines when he hit them?
In one of the Pittsburgh drug trials in 1985, John Milner, who had been a Mays teammate with the New York Mets in 1972 and ‘73, testified that Mays kept a bottle of what players called “red juice” in his Mets locker. It was an amphetamine-laced liquid that players shared.
Mays denied it, though not in court because he was not called to testify. Amphetamines were popular with players in the Mays-Aaron era, and they were not banned, as they are now.
Also testifying, Dale Berra said Willie Stargell and Bill Madlock regularly dispensed amphetamines to their Pirates teammates. Dave Parker, on the witness stand the same day as Miner, also told the jury that he received amphetamines from Stargell and Madlock.
In disciplining players for cocaine use, Commissioner Peter Ueberroth opted to overlook the testimony of Milner, Berra and Parker.
BULLETIN: WILLIE BETTER THAN A-ROD
The website FiveThirtyEight has made a stunning revelation: “Willie Mays was Way Better than Alex Rodriguez.”
The writer of this revelation, Neil Paine, uses statistics known as WAR and JAWS to establish his finding. I know a lot of people, writers and others, who know that without using WAR and JAWS. Some of them don’t even know – or care—what WAR and JAWS are.
There’s another aspect of Paine’s article I find troubling. In this one, he’s not alone. In fact, there are far too many writers and broadcasters who make this mistake:
“History was made Thursday night at Yankee Stadium, when New York Yankees designated hitter Alex Rodriguez launched his 661st career home run into the left center-field bleachers.”
There was nothing historic about the home run. The second sentence was accurate: “The blast moved Rodriguez past Willie Mays into sole possession of fourth place on baseball’s all-time home run leaderboard.”
There was nothing historic about the home run for various reasons. Rodriguez was not the first player to hit a 661st home run; he was the fourth. Babe Ruth made history when he hit his 714th and last home run. Hank Aaron made history when he passed Ruth. Barry Bonds made history – if you ignore his chemically aided homers – when he passed Aaron.
No. 661 was a milestone for A-Rod, not history. Writers and announcers are too history happy and often use the concept incorrectly.