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After walking out of a grievance hearing this week, Alex Rodriguez said Major League Baseball “had nothing” on him and now it looks like he will have to wait until 2014 to learn the outcome of the grievance hearing into his 211-game suspension.
Still, Rodriguez was upbeat in an interview with ESPNNewYork.com after the brief meeting.
“We crushed it,” Rodriguez said. “They had nothing.”
But his elation with his lawyers was tempered somewhat by the realization that his fate now lies in the hands of arbitrator Fredric Horowitz.
“Now that it’s over, as far as the state of the case, how the evidence went in, how my team challenged it, I feel great,” Rodriguez said. “The only thing that concerns me is the process.”
Rodriguez spoke with ESPNNewYork.com for about 45 minutes in a conference room at the Manhattan offices of his attorneys about three hours after baseball finished up its last order of business in the hearing, calling three rebuttal witnesses in the afternoon after Rodriguez’s lawyers had rested their case in the morning.
Both sides have until Dec. 11 to file written briefs or closing arguments and another 10 days after that to file replies to each other’s briefs. Once that process is completed, Horowitz has 25 days to render his decision, almost certainly pushing a resolution of the case into January of next year.
Already, Rodriguez’s legal team, led by Joseph Tacopina, is planning its next move — obtaining an injunction to prevent a suspension from being implemented. Yet despite Rodriguez’s optimism, his lawyers seem resigned to the reality that Horowitz will mete out some form of punishment.
“I firmly believe Alex should get a goose egg here, but Horowitz has to be prepared for this to be his last arbitration to do that,” said Jordan Siev, one of Rodriguez’s attorneys. “But do I think he would have the courage to give him a goose egg? I’d like to think so, but I frankly can’t imagine Alex walks out of there with nothing.”
