Back in March reports circulated that Alex Rodriguez had some considerable unpaid legal fees. Which, as I noted at the time, is not terribly unusual in a large, expensive case. There is always negotiation and posturing after a representation — especially an unsuccessful representation — is wrapped up. It was not then worth the sort of reaction the story was getting from the Daily Newses of the World, who seized on the story to call A-Rod a deadbeat.
Flash forward a bit more than three months, however, and it appears that the negotiation and posturing hasn’t yet resulted in a settlement. The Daily News reports that one of A-Rod’s lawyers — David Cornwall — plans to sue A-Rod over the unpaid fees. The story says he plans to sue next week. We’ll see if he does.
Of course the Daily News is not content to merely report this news. It, through its I-Team Twitter feed, decided that this was a good basis to go after me personally for mocking their premature outrage back in March. It did so last night by searching for and retweeting that post I wrote back then, implicitly saying, “see, we were right!”
Personally, I love being vindicated and I am not above doing at least a little football-spiking when it turns out that, contrary to what a lot of people thought, I was right. I have an ego like anyone else and I don’t begrudge the Daily News I-Team having one too. However, this is a curious time for the Daily News to do this given that, with respect to this particular story, the passage of more than three months fundamentally changes it and does nothing to make my analysis from back in March incorrect.
Just because A-Rod is being sued now does not make their calling him a deadbeat back in March correct. Nor does it render my view at the time — that calling him a deadbeat was premature and that, at the time, there was nothing unusual about A-Rod not paying his fees yet — incorrect. Not paying his bill for more than three more months makes a pretty significant difference, actually. If you don’t believe me, pay your mortgage a week late one time. Then, a bit later, pay your mortgage three months late. See if you don’t get different reactions.
Basically, the Daily News I-Team, in its self-satisfied tweets last night, is basically saying, “See, when we said this stopped clock was telling the correct time earlier, we were right! Look at what the stopped clock says now!”
But hey, you don’t need me to tell you that the I-Team is wrong more often than it is right about such things:
A-Rod planning to return & retire to collect fat salary before suspension hits: sources http://t.co/ZBLOLZy0fJ via @nydailynews
— NYDN Sports I-Team (@NYDNSportsITeam) June 27, 2013
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to change the lining on my bird cage. The piss has completely soaked through the ten layers of “A-Rod will never play for the Yankees again” and “The Yankees will void A-Rod’s contract” stories the Daily News wrote last year.
