The battle between Alex Rodriguez and the league over his alleged PED use has now shifted to a war between A ROD and the Yankees. The Yankees have been using legal tactics to rid themselves of A Rod’s extensive contract and it’s turned into a big back and forth between the two parties. Rodriguez believes the Yankees misled him about the extent of his injuries in an effort to keep him off the field and help their case. The Yankees have fired back. Read more after the jump.
New York Yankees team president Randy Levine on Saturday challenged Alex Rodriguez to release his medical records to support assertions by Rodriguez’s lawyer that the Yankees had misled their $275 million third baseman about the extent of his injuries in the hopes Rodriguez would be unable to play again.
“Alex should put up or shut up,” Levine told ESPNNewYork.com in a telephone conversation Saturday afternoon.
The New York Times published a story Saturday in which Joseph Tacopina, Rodriguez’s new attorney, alleged Levine had told Dr. Bryan Kelly, who was about to perform hip surgery on Rodriguez in January, “I don’t ever want to see him on the field again.”
“We will put up, mark my words, we will put up,” Tacopina told ESPNNewYork.com on Saturday. “[Levine] is always a very big talker, but he is going to be humbled eventually. He is acting in a way that if his bosses and superiors and the Steinbrenner family have any sense of decency, if they are true to what the Yankees’ heritage is, they would be appalled with how their president is acting. We will put up.”
Tacopina alleged that Levine wanted Kelly to help ensure Rodriguez could not return to the field again so the Yankees could collect insurance on the final $114 million remaining on his contract heading into this season.
Levine said with Rodriguez’s permission, the Yankees would release all of his medical records dating back to Rodriguez’s first hip surgery — March 2009 — to refute Tacopina’s contention that he was not told by the club Rodriguez was unfit to play during last October’s playoffs.
