A-Rod and Cano taking major advice from a convicted felon?

[RedOctober3829]

Alex Rodriguez was ready to retire.
As Major League Baseball prepared to slap Rodriguez with a historic suspension for his sordid star turn in the Biogenesis doping scandal, the 38-year-old Yankee third baseman privately told advisers last summer that he was ready to cut a deal with MLB officials and quit.
Years of steroids and legal warfare had worn him down. And he faced accelerated drug testing if he continued to play.
“He had been talking about retirement because of injuries. Given his prior involvement (with doping), he knew he would be a target for additional testing,” says one source close to the case. “There was no way he could use and play again.”
But multiple sources told the Daily News that A-Rod’s last chance for a dignified exit ended when he turned to Desiree Perez, a Manhattan nightclub manager with a lengthy criminal record and close links to hip-hop mogul Jay Z.
While Perez is not an employee, officer or agent of Jay Z’s new agency, Roc Nation Sports, sources say she is a major behind-the-scenes influence.
“She’s directly involved with the athletes,” one baseball insider said. “She has a lot of power.”
Perez is also a convicted felon, with a long and wild history as a DEA cooperating witness and then a fugitive. She wore wires to meet with major cocaine traffickers, according to federal court transcripts obtained by the Daily News.
Perez declined numerous interview requests and did not respond to questions submitted to her attorneys about her past.
While sources say Perez was behind much of A-Rod’s failed legal and PR strategy last summer, Rodriguez describes her only as a “long-time friend.”
 

“(I) made my own decisions with my legal team over the last year, and I have accepted my penalties and am trying to serve my penalty,” A-Rod, who has no official ties to Roc Nation Sports, told The News recently.
But according to sources, fueled by animus toward MLB and distrust of the Yankees, Perez called for blood last summer. She urged Rodriguez to fight MLB on Biogenesis even though the league’s investigators had flipped the anti-aging clinic’s proprietor, Anthony Bosch.
Baseball’s $275 million-man had the means and connections to the best legal and professional team in the world.
But when the Biogenesis scandal engulfed him, the ex-MVP instead bet his future on the advice of a woman with a dubious past and zero experience with arbitration, collective bargaining or baseball’s drug policy.
Court records obtained by The News show Perez was part of a massive cocaine distribution case in 1994. Following her arrest, she became a key government cooperator, going undercover to help the DEA build successful cases against major traffickers in Puerto Rico and Colombia.
 

 

According to one source with inside knowledge of A-Rod’s strategy, Perez demanded that Rodriguez fight and accused the seven-time All-Star of letting MLB and the Yankees drive him from the game.
Her combative stance came at a pivotal time for Rodriguez.
He was recovering from a second hip surgery in four years and angling to protect his massive contract amid emerging evidence of performance-enhancing drug use.
 

Rodriguez approached Yankees president Randy Levine directly, asking for a meeting to explore an exit strategy to protect his multimillion-dollar contract.
When Levine declined, telling Rodriguez that his problem was with MLB and not the team, Perez confronted A-Rod with demands to return to the field, according to one source familiar with the strategy.
“This is when Desiree Perez hijacked the process and forced him back on the team,” the source said.
At one point, after Rodriguez missed a minor league rehab game because of a tight quad and the Yankees asked him to return to
New York for an MRI, Perez helped locate a doctor to review the test and find there was no strain, according to the source.
The plan backfired when SNY and The News reported that the orthopedist, Dr. Michael Gross, had been disciplined by the New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners for “failing to adequately ensure proper patient treatment involving the prescribing of hormones, including steroids.”
“This was her ploy, to expose the Yankees and take retirement out of Alex’s hands,” the source said. “She thought she had a gotcha moment when Gross said the MRI didn’t indicate a strain.”
Despite the goof, A-Rod was apparently still taking Perez’s advice on Aug. 2. After smacking a home run in Trenton during his minor-league rehab assignment, Rodriguez told the media that the Yankees and MLB were conspiring to push him out of baseball.
“I think that’s the pink elephant in the room,” said Rodriguez, claiming “people are finding creative ways to cancel (his) contract.”
 

Two days later, commissioner Bud Selig hit Rodriguez with a 211-game ban.
“They wanted to embarrass the Yankees,” one source said. “Cost them money. That dynamic, that is why Desiree Perez gave an ultimatum to A-Rod. That is why they wanted the Yankees to play him.”
The result was an all-out assault on the Yankees, MLB and Selig, Bosch, the Yankees’ doctor, the arbitrator that would hear Rodriguez’s appeal of the suspension, the media and anyone else that got in the way.
At one point A-Rod’s “supporters” showed up at his arbitration hearing on Park Ave. with signs comparing Levine to the devil.

There were accusations, denied by Levine, that his contract called for a bonus if he could get the Yankees out from under A-Rod’s massive deal.
“Scratch the commissioner’s eyes out and kick the Yankees in the shin,” is how Rodriguez lawyer David Cornwell, speaking at Villanova sports law symposium in March, described the strategy that led to Rodriguez’s suspension for the entire 2014 season.
 

Perez was a 26-year-old mother of young children in 1994 when she was arrested in New York for possession with intent to distribute 35 kilograms of cocaine, according to court records reviewed by The News.

Federal authorities charged she was part of a drug conspiracy stretching from New York to Florida to Puerto Rico.
She and co-defendant Amaury Lopez faced at least 10 years in prison (Lopez was supposedly one of at least three men to marry Perez since the late 1980s).
But Perez cooperated; in return for telling the DEA everything — and “putting herself at substantial risk,” as one prosecutor put it — she was sentenced to 30 months in a military-style boot camp program in 1995.
 

 

The Biogenesis showdown coincided with Roc Nation’s ballyhooed agency launch. While Rodriguez was not an official client, his friend and teammate Robinson Cano was.
Desiree Perez played a large role, along with Jay Z and her husband, in the negotiations that landed Cano his $240 million contract with the Seattle Mariners.
A December 2013 story on MyNorthwest.com suggested Seattle general manager Jack Zduriencik spent as much time wooing the Roc Nation principals as he did Cano.
“We took them down into the locker room to give them a tour of the field, and we had lockers set up for them. There was Felix Hernandez, Robinson Cano, (Roc Nation president) Juan Perez, (Roc Nation’s) Desiree Perez, Jay Z, the whole group,” Zduriencik said.
 

HAHAHAH

Sources told The News that Rodriguez listens to Desiree Perez and others in Jay Z’s circle because he hopes to become an agent himself — perhaps even joining the hip-hop star’s fledgling agency.
 

 http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-team/babe-ruthless-rod-shady-lady-article-1.1796578#ixzz32C88W0oP


This is comedic gold.  You can't make this stuff up.




 

 

[AbbyNoho]

I dunno, has she done anything wrong since being caught 20 years ago? People can make mistakes and change. 

if she's woefully unqualified to be offering this kind of advice, that's one thing, but I don't think it's totally fair to judge someone on a drug arrest 20 years ago.

 

[ifmanis5]

Yup, Scott Boras.

 

[CoRP]

if she's woefully unqualified to be offering this kind of advice, that's one thing, but I don't think it's totally fair to judge someone on a drug arrest 20 years ago.

Possession with intent to distribute 35 kilograms of cocaine isn't quite the same as getting caught with a dime bag of weed.

 

[glennhoffmania]

I'm trying to understand why this woman seems to have such a grudge against the Yankees.

 

[uncannymanny]

Possession with intent to distribute 35 kilograms of cocaine isn't quite the same as getting caught with a dime bag of weed.

 
Yeah, that is an amount that would make Avon Barksdale feel inadequate.

 

[mauidano]

Reaffirms the fact that A-Rod is one of the dumbest professional athletes in the history of sports.  Thank whoever/whatever you pray to that the deal with the Sox fell through.

 

[Reverend]

So basically, this whole ARod saga happened because... some hip-hop chick called him a wuss?
 
Guys are awesome.

 

[terrynever]

I enjoyed the line from Empire State of Mind where Jay-Z takes all the credit for making the Yankees hat popular.
 
"Catch me at the X with OG at a Yankee game
Shit, I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can

 

 

[Average Reds]

 

This is comedic gold.  You can't make this stuff up.

 
I would argue that the Daily News story is fairly persuasive evidence that you can, in fact, make this stuff up.
 
A-Rod is a world-class tool, but I don't believe for a second that he spent millions on a high-powered legal and PR team and then ignored their advice because Desiree Perez "gave him an ultimatum."

 

[RedOctober3829]

I would argue that the Daily News story is fairly persuasive evidence that you can, in fact, make this stuff up.
 
A-Rod is a world-class tool, but I don't believe for a second that he spent millions on a high-powered legal and PR team and then ignored their advice because Desiree Perez "gave him an ultimatum."

He would do that because, in fact, he is a world-class tool. When it comes to ARod, nothing is out of the equation.

 

[chrisfont9]

In life I always ask myself, what would Desiree do? 

 

[SumnerH]

 
I would argue that the Daily News story is fairly persuasive evidence that you can, in fact, make this stuff up.
 
A-Rod is a world-class tool, but I don't believe for a second that he spent millions on a high-powered legal and PR team and then ignored their advice because Desiree Perez "gave him an ultimatum."

On the one hand, this makes sense. On the other hand, we're talking about someone with a painting of himself as a centaur over his bed.

 

[Sprowl]

Desirée rides the centaur, and both kinda like the vibe.

 

[EvilEmpire]

Poor ARod. He just wants to be loved.