(Courtesy of Joe Cingrana/CBSNewYork.com)
Now that the HOF announcements have been made, the expectation is that the arbitrator in the A-Rod suspension case will hand down his final decision any day. When he does, the latest reports have A-Rod and his legal team ready to fight the decision to the bitter end. According to the NY Daily News, A-Rod will seek an injunction if the suspension is upheld on the grounds that the suspension and subsequent arbitration hearing were "unfair and biased" against him and in violation of federal labor laws. An anonymous source in the Daily News report said "the papers are all ready" for the official filing and that A-Rod's people "are just waiting for the announcement."
This will basically be a last gasp attempt by Alex to keep his hopes of playing Major League Baseball again alive, and the swiftness with which his legal team has prepared for this course of action provides some insight into what they expect arbitrator Frederic Horowitz's decision to be. Their belief is that they can follow in NFL player Jonathan Vilma's footsteps and get an "unfair" suspension overturned through the courts, but that was a different case in a different sport with different rules so it's hardly and apples-to-apples comparison.
I honestly can't remember if I'd said this already or not, but I don't think we're going to see A-Rod on the field in 2014 and I think there's a very good chance he's played his last MLB game. At the absolute least, I see the suspension getting reduced to 162 games and it wouldn't surprise me if the full 211 was upheld. The deck has been stacked against him from the beginning and he's basically down to his last card. The odds of him overturning the decision through a court injunction are no better than the odds of the suspension being overturned.
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