many of baseballs home run records he was the postseasons most valuable player during the yankees 2009 run to a world series titlebut over the past few years he has been hampered by injuries and accusations that he has used banned substances in 2009 he admitted to using steroids as a member of the texas rangers from 2001 to 2003 but he has denied using them sincefridays developments came more than a year after a report in miami new times a weekly newspaper tied rodriguez to biogenesis of america a south florida antiaging clinic the newspaper obtained records from biogenesis which was directed by anthony p bosch suggesting rodriguez and a number of ballplayers had taken banned substances from the clinicinitially bosch and rodriguez denied the relationship but bosch later began cooperating with mlb investigators the information provided by bosch who is not licensed to practice medicine in florida led to 14 suspensions including ones accepted by the allstars ryan braun and nelson cruz rodriguez who received a far longer suspension than the others was the only player to appeal his suspension he bolstered his legal team bringing on a host of advisers including tacopina a criminal defense lawyer known for taking on highprofile casesas the weeks passed rodriguezs dispute with mlb deepened his lawyers claimed baseball officials had bullied witnesses in the case and there were new reports about rodriguezs use of banned substances in november the new york times reported that rodriguez had failed a drug test for stimulants in 2006 a point his lawyers deniedin midnovember after 12 days of proceedings in front of an arbitrator fredric horowitz rodriguez stormed out of the hearing room at mlb headquarters when his request to call selig to testify was rejected less than two months later horowitz issued his opinion that rodriguez had committed the most egregious violations of baseballs antidoping rules reported to datelegal experts have questioned why rodriguez and mlb continued sparring for several monthsthere is no winning in these situations said steven g eckhaus an employment law expert with cadwalader wickersham taft eckhaus said rodriguez finally did the smart thing by dropping his litigation it was an intractable situation eckhaus said mlb didnt win they got tarred dramatically here their dirty laundry was exposed the use of drugs was exposedwhen one of its major stars was turned into a circus side show mlb lost just as badly