The story so far
Earlier: A family has sued after their daughter was struck in the head by a foul ball at Turner Field.
The latest: Baseball’s players union asked the judge to prohibit the release of reports on tests for performance-enhancing drugs. Lawyers are trying to show that players hit the ball harder than in the past.
What’s next: The judge will rule on whether the records should be released.
Major League Baseball's players union on Monday asked a Fulton County judge to prohibit the release of records on performance-enhancing drugs, which plaintiff's lawyers want to use in a case involving a girl struck by a foul ball.
Disclosing such documents would violate confidentiality agreements the players worked out with the league in their collective bargaining agreement and would compromise the testing program, a lawyer for the Major League Baseball Players Association told State Court Judge Patsy Porter.
Porter did not issue an immediate ruling. She is presiding over a lawsuit brought by Fred Fletcher, whose 6-year-old daughter's skull was shattered by a foul ball at Turner Field.
The foul was hit by then-Braves’ outfielder Melky Cabrera Aug. 31, 2010. If the Braves had extended the safety netting behind home plate farther down the foul line, Fletcher’s daughter would not have suffered a traumatic brain injury, the suit says.
Two years after the incident, Cabrera was suspended for using the banned anabolic steroid testosterone.
Fletcher’s lawyers are asking MLB to turn over documents from its testing program so they can show jurors that players are hitting the ball harder than they did in the past, giving fans less time to get out of the way. If the Braves knew this was a problem and did nothing to improve safety, it shows a “conscious indifference or recklessness,” Mike Moran, one of Fletcher’s lawyers, told Porter.
“The risk to the fans was increased,” he said. “Major League Baseball and the Braves should have taken additional steps to extend the netting.”
Jeffrey Demain, a lawyer representing the players association, told Porter that the continued success of the league’s drug-testing program depends on keeping the players’ medical records confidential.
The union is taking a “neutral” position on the safety netting litigation, Demain added. It may indeed be relevant to the litigation, he said, how fast baseballs are coming off players’ bats and where foul balls are most likely to go into the stands.
But it’s “irrelevant” as to why baseballs are being hit harder, he said.
Matthew Dwyer, another one of Fletcher’s lawyers, told Porter that former Braves star Chipper Jones certainly knew about the dangers.
Jones gave pretrial testimony in a deposition in the case and was asked what he thought about the area in the stands where Fletcher’s daughter was hit. “He said he’d never let his family sit there, knowing what he knew,” Dwyer said.
Neal Abramson, a lawyer for MLB, said the league has already turned over to Fletcher’s lawyers all of its drug-testing information involving Cabrera, who now plays for the Chicago White Sox. And MLB has also let the plaintiffs’ lawyers know how many players tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs over the past several years.
But Moran said he wanted to know whether there are memos that show that MLB knew there was a more pervasive problem and whether it suspected juiced-up players were avoiding detection. He cited the case involving Alex Rodriguez, the superstar infielder who was released by the New York Yankees on Friday. In 2014, Rodriguez served a 162-game suspension for PED use, after disclosures he obtained the drugs from an anti-aging clinic in Florida. Yet Rodriguez never failed a drug test, Moran noted.
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