Someone is going to put him in jail, right?
I mean, MLB’s chief operating officer Rob Manfred made it quite clear on 60 Minutes that the threat against Tony Bosch’s life, made by an associate of Alex Rodriguez, needed to be taken seriously, even if he couldn’t go into any details about it. It’s no secret that MLB had hired guards to protect Bosch after it was revealed that he’d cooperate with the investigation. He wouldn’t name the person behind the threat, other than to connect the person with Rodriguez.
It also seems Manfred wanted us to believe that this, along with the attempted bribing of Bosch, is part of why Rodriguez was suspended for 211 games, reduced now to 162, for his PED usage, when other players got only 50 games. Bug Selig, also interviewed, was so bothered by what Rodriguez did that he couldn’t seem to provide any detail at all. Perhaps it was unsuitable for a prime time network audience. But it was there and it was huge and it was worth an extra 161 games.
So, what about it?
Manfred said that it’s definite that Rodriguez is an associate of this individual, but he added that he couldn’t know if Rodriguez himself was aware of the threat.
Also unknown is whether MLB turned any evidence about said threat over to the proper authorities. Did Bosch want that? It doesn’t seem he ever went to the police himself about any threats. Of course, that probably would have presented some complications, given his various illegal activities.
Indeed, it seems MLB’s only real interest in the threat was as more leverage against Rodriguez. That was certainly how it was presented as tonight. Rather than talk about Bosch’s other clients or how easy MLB’s drug testing was to beat or maybe delve into how the league perhaps benefited from PEDs during the 1990s, we were treated to a segment on how a criminal no one in the audience cares about may have had to fear for his life because of undisclosed threats, even though since, obviously, he’s talking on TV right now, nothing ever came of them.
And that seems incredibly weak to me. There was no investigating on the part of 60 Minutes here: everything from tonight’s program was supplied by Bosch and documents owned by MLB. If the segment was going to spend time on this threat on Bosch’s life, it would have been nice had it dug up some facts on who actually made the threat. Bosch knows. Manfred knows. Selig knows. So, why don’t we?