While Alex Rodriguez is swatting crucial home runs against the Boston Red Sox, his legal team is wrangling with Major League Baseball and Yankees brass in an increasingly ugly war of words in the media.
Rodriguez's lawyer Joe Tacopina recently went on The Today Show with Matt Lauer to denounce MLB's frequent leaks as the days pile up on the slog toward Rodriguez's appeal of a 211-game suspension for "repeated" violations of the Joint Drug Agreement, as well as efforts to hinder MLB's investigation.
During Tacopina's interview, Lauer questioned him on why a representative of Rodriguez footed the bill for Bosch's representation after Tacopina slammed him as a man who peddled steroids to high school athletes.
The question has come up in other forums as well, and Tacopina is tiptoeing around the issue for now. "Clearly there was a relationship -- a consulting relationship," Tacopina said. "I mean, Biogenesis, that lab has consulted with many professional athletes. Not every single one of those athletes has been accused of or found guilty of using illegal substances."
He also stated that MLB's "significant" amount of evidence is lacking in scientific credibility, and they are relying too heavily on Bosch's testimony. "It's witness testimony from one witness -- a witness who's not going to be available, in my prediction, to either testify in arbitration or at some federal proceeding."
Still, for all Tacopina's recent bluster Rodriguez has yet to deny that he used performance enhancing drugs after his admission in 2009 that he was juicing while playing for the Texas Rangers. Tacopina has refused to tackle that question head on as well.
"If I utter those words, I've just violated the confidentiality clause of the JDA -- that's the bottom line," Tacopina said. "... If you're a supporter or a detractor, what happened to him is not fair by anyone's standards. It's clearly a vendetta, it's clearly a witch hunt to get him 211 games -- not justifiable under anyone's scenario that is being objective."
© Copyright 2024 Sports World News, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.