The Baseball Thread

A-Rod to miss all of 2014 season

Alex Rodriguez has been suspended for the entire 2014 season by arbitrator Fredric Horowitz, who
reduced the New York Yankees third baseman's ban from 211 games to 162 for his involvement in
Major League Baseball's Biogenesis scandal.

The suspension also includes all potential playoff games in 2014.

As expected, Rodriguez said he will contest Saturday's ruling in federal court.

The decision will relieve the Yankees of about $24 million in luxury-tax savings based on A-Rod's
2014 salary; the team still owes him about $61 million for 2015-17.

Horowitz's ruling upholds a good portion of the original 211-game suspension levied by MLB, which
banned Rodriguez in August after concluding its investigation. Rodriguez continued playing after
appealing.

Tony Bosch: A-Rod was very detailed

Anthony Bosch, the founder and former proprietor of the infamous anti-aging clinic Biogenesis,
says Alex Rodriguez was meticulous in his quest to exploit the benefits of performance-enhancing
substances for an edge -- and ultimately in seeking to become the sole member of the 800 home
run club.

Speaking in an interview with the CBS News program "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday night, Bosch
said he personally injected Rodriguez with PEDs because the New York Yankees third baseman,
whose suspension was reduced Saturday from 211 games to 162, was "scared of needles."

"So at times, he would ask me to inject," Bosch said in the interview, according to a publicity release.

A partial transcript of the interview and text messages that "describe a secretive Rodriguez and an
accommodating Bosch" have also been published by the New York Daily News.

"Try to use service elevators. Careful. Tons of eyes," Rodriguez told Bosch in a text message in
June 2012 in Atlanta, the day before he hit his 23rd career grand slam to tie Lou Gehrig's record.

The "60 Minutes" segment also revealed Rodriguez spent $12,000 a month in doing business with
Bosch, according to the newspaper.

"Alex cared. Alex wanted to know," Bosch said, according to the Daily News. "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."