Lunch Links: Mitch Jones should Sue MLB
ESPN The Magazine’s Rick Reilly says minor leaguers like former Sun Devil Mitch Jones should sue Major League Baseball. And we can’t wait to see Knowshon Moreno run into Lawrence Guy.
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Did you know Mitch Jones has hit almost 200 home runs in nine minor league seasons since leaving ASU? With numbers like that, one would think he’d have found his way to a major league at-bat by now.
Uh, nope.
Jones once hit 39 homers in a single season in the Yankees’ farm system. But his path to the majors was blocked by Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield. Both Giambi and Sheffield were named in the Mitchell Report, along with former Sun Devil Paul Lo Duca. (And don’t get us started on Barry Bonds.)
Rick Reilly of ESPN The Magazine has a solution for guys like Mitch Jones who came of age in what he calls baseball’s Pharmacy Era. They should sue.
“I got screwed,” Jones said.
No kidding, we say.
We want to add more to this story, but we can’t. For the first time in years, Reilly has hit one out of the park—presumably without performance enhancers.
Meanwhile, the East Valley Tribune caught up with Lawrence Guy, whose move from defensive end to defensive tackle last weekend was met with positive reviews. Why the move? With Dexter Davis and Luis Vasquez on the roster, we’re pretty strong at end already.
A 6-foot-5 270-pound behemoth, Guy is one of the top prospects to come out of Las Vegas in recent years. Not surprisingly, he never considered attending UNLV.
And finally, do you Knowshon? OK, sorry. We’ll probably be hearing a lot of that in the next week or so. Trust us, we’re not looking ahead. But, you should check out this video of Georgia running back Knowshon Moreno hurdling a defender en route to a 20-yard gain.
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When you think about who the steroids really hurt in baseball, it never occurred to me how it effected the non-steroid using players. Maybe because I only thought about the big picture, how it effected the game as a whole, or maybe because I figured they were ALL using it.
But that does have to be awful for the players that were truly good athletes and were completely ignored because they chose not to do something illegal.
But I think this idea of the non-drug taking players seeking justice is an interesting thought. Do they have a case? Would it do more harm then good? Or maybe it wouldn’t effect anything and it would be a waste of time.
Either way they definitely got screwed.
Note: This is not intended as legal advice because this isn’t my specialty and I have never met Mitch Jones. That said, I’ve argued in front of every judge in this state, often as a lawyer.
Taking the Stanford prof at his word, the phrase “nonstatutory labor exemption circumstances” essentially means that the law doesn’t recognize this kind of harm.
The player would have to convince a judge with an equitable “won’t someone please think of the children” type of argument, which I guess is possible, but I think highly unlikely.
MLB teams have a pretty strong argument that they can decide who plays on their team for whatever reason they choose (e.g. in the old days, bonus babies had to be kept on the roster; rule 5 players must make the team and stay on for the year). This means that a player could be on the roster because the GM wants an all-mustachioed team. So long as the reasons for the decision are not discriminatory against a protected class (e.g. no black players), then they can choose their roster based on whim (see the Pittsburgh Pirates desperate desire to staff an all-Laroche infield). Non-steroid users are not classified as a protected class.
Hope that helps.
OK, so that was awesome. Thank you kind Law Talking Guy!
I read all about this on the Bob Law Law Blog
….ugh… Bob Loblaw Low Blog…. hear that sound? That’s a joke flushing down a toilet…
“I’ve argued in front of every judge in this state, often as a lawyer.”
…. and while I’m quote my favorite shows, awesome Simpsons reference, Law Guy!