Alex Rodriguez continues feud with Yankees front office as lawyer alleges malpractice

Every time it seems as though the A-Rod vs. Yankees saga couldn't get uglier, the mud starts flying once again. (Al Bello/Getty Images) It's been an eventful

Every time it seems as though the A-Rod vs. Yankees saga couldn't get uglier, the mud starts flying once again. (Al Bello/Getty Images)

It's been an eventful few daysweeksmonths forever for Alex Rodriguez, between his looming 200-plus-game suspension, allegations that he ratted out other alleged steroids users to MLB, and constant sniping with the Yankees' front office over all these matters. Apparently believing that his name hadn't been in the news for far too long (read: at least an hour), A-Rod decided that the bickering with the Yankees hadn't gotten enough play just yet.

In an article published Saturday in The New York Times, A-Rod's lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, alleged that the Yankees, in concert with Bud Selig, were intentionally trying to end Rodriguez's career so as to avoid paying him the remaining $86 million on his contract and committed medical malpractice to get him off the field. As Tacopina put it:

Tacopina said baseball investigators were trying to ruin Rodriguez with accusations of doping based on the word of the operator of an anti-aging clinic in South Florida "who has no credibility."

...

"We have basically had enough," Tacopina said Friday. "The process is being perverted when they act the way they do to make their case. They are pushing Alex to his limit."

He added: "The legacy of George Steinbrenner would be horrified. This is the New York Yankees. This isn’t some thug-culture club."

According to Tacopina, the Yankees were fully aware of A-Rod's hip injury, which he alleged they had uncovered in an MRI taken during the 2012 playoffs, but continued to play Rodriguez anyway. "They rolled him out there like an invalid and made him look like he was finished as a ballplayer," Tacopina told the Times. Furthermore, Tacopina claimed that Yankees president Randy Levine told a doctor treating A-Rod ahead of the hip surgery, "I don't ever want to see [A-Rod] on the field again."

On top of that, Tacopina attacked the credibility of Biogenesis founder Tony Bosch, accused MLB's investigators of misconduct, and claimed that the commissioner's office was "working in conjunction" with the Yankees to get Rodriguez banned for life. In short, he did everything but insinuate that Brian Cashman murdered someone and then tried to pin it on A-Rod.

When reached for comment by the Times, Levine denied all of Tacopina's claims, saying, "It's pretty sad that any lawyer would make such ridiculous statements." In a separate interview with CBS Sports' Jon Heyman, Levine offered to release the team's medical records on A-Rod, then asked Rodriguez to release his medical records as collected by Dr. Anthony Galea. Galea, if you recall, was tied to A-Rod through a massive HGH smuggling operation.

"It's time to put up or shut up," Levine told Heyman, which is a real sentence said by a team's president to its nominal star player in this endlessly absurd soap opera.