Did not age well
A federal judge in New York mixed technical points of law with humor and theatrical flourishes in delivering a rousing defeat Friday to a group of baseball daily fantasy players who sued the Astros, Red Sox and Major League Baseball, claiming they were defrauded by the sport’s electronic sign-stealing scandal.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff’s 32-page opinion in the case, filed by fantasy players from Massachusetts, California, Texas, Florida and California, begins by quoting from the 1956 film “High Society” and then dismantles the plaintiffs’ case while delivering a brief scolding to the Astros and Red Sox for their misdeeds.
While Rakoff, according to a 2014 magazine profile, is a Yankees fan who keeps a baseball autographed by Hall of Fame reliever Mariano Rivera on his desk, he nonetheless dismissed the fantasy players’ complaint as “verbose, rhetorical and conclusory” — conclusory referring to a conclusion that is unsupported by facts — in dropping the case against two teams that are hardly on any list of Yankees fans’ favorites.
Rakoff began by noting that baseball celebrates stealing, if only of a base, and noted that it also can “lead our heroes to employ forbidden substances on their (spit) balls, their (corked) bats or even their (steroid-consuming) selves.
“But as Frank Sinatra famously said to Grace Kelly in the 1956 movie musical ‘High Society,’ ‘There are rules about such things,’” the judge wrote. “One of these rules forbids the use of electronic devices in aid of the players’ inevitable efforts to steal the opposing catcher’s signs.
“In 2017, and thereafter, the Houston Astros, and somewhat less blatantly the Boston Red Sox, shamelessly broke that rule, and thereby broke the hearts of all true baseball fans. But did the initial efforts of those teams, and supposedly of Major League Baseball itself, to conceal these foul deeds from the simple sports bettors who wagered on fantasy baseball create a cognizable legal claim?
“On the allegations here made,” the judge concluded, “the answer is no.”
See here and here for the background. A copy of the judge’s ruling is embedded in the story. There are still other lawsuits out there for the Astros to contend with as a result of the sign stealing scandal, but this one is done for now. We’ll see if the plaintiffs try to appeal. ESPN has more.
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