In this Oct. 1, 2013, file photo, New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez arrives at the offices of Major League Baseball in New York.
The New York Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez, who is suspended for 162 Major League Baseball games as a result of his alleged use of performance enhancing drugs, sued Major League Baseball and its players union on Monday to get the suspension overturned.
The Yankees star was originally suspended for 211 games for allegedly using three types of performance enhancing drugs, but an arbitrator ruled in Rodriguez’s appeal to take 49 games off of the suspension on Saturday. The Associated Press reports that the third-baseman is seeking to overturn the suspension through the lawsuit, though Arbitrator Frederic Horowitz ruled there was “clear and convincing evidence” that Rodriguez used three banned substances.
After the arbitrator’s ruling, Rodriguez issued a statement denying the allegations. “I have been clear that I did not use performance enhancing substances as alleged in the notice of discipline, or violate the Basic Agreement or the Joint Drug Agreement in any manner, and in order to prove it I will take this fight to federal court,” Rodriguez said via the statement released by spokesman Ron Berkowitz.
On Sunday, the man who ran the clinic in Florida that is being linked to Rodriguez, Anthony Bosch, was interviewed by CBS’s 60 Minutes. In the interview he detailed the star’s alleged use of the banned substances.
“Alex cared. Alex wanted to know,” the NY Daily News reports Bosch told 60 Minutes. “He would study the product. He would study the substances. He would study the dosages, because he wanted to achieve all his human performance or in this case, sports performance, objectives. And the most important one was the 800 home run club.”
[AP]