Alex Rodriguez Denies Steroid Charges
O'BRIEN: So let's talk more about A-Rod. The scathing new report by the "Miami New Times" pointing fingers at Yankees player Alex Rodriguez as a possible client of this anti-aging clinic in Miami. The clinic has records that may or may not show they delivered performance enhancing drugs to A-Rod and other big league players. I want to get right to Dan Shaughnessy, a sports columnist for "The Boston Globe," author of the new book "Francona." Nice to have you with us. Let's talk about this report. What does your gut tell you about this report?</s>DAN SHAUGHNESSY, SPORTS COLUMNIST, "BOSTON GLOBE": They always say no. They always deny IT. We understand that. And, unfortunately, for Alex right now in the Lance Armstrong fallout, people aren't really believing that, plus A-Rod has history with this. He -- three, four years ago, 2009, he confessed to us very fully at the time, said he was young and immature at the time, talking about transgressions from 2000, 2003. And people cut him slack and believed him. If this comes out to be true, it won't be good for Alex.</s>O'BRIEN: That came, that confession, came after lots of lying about it.</s>JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, yes. He went on "60 Minutes" with Katie Couric who asked him flat out if he used steroids and he said no. And he had come back and say he lied.</s>O'BRIEN: They don't really have a lot of corroborating material. Would you be more likely -- does it make you disbelieve it more, make you feel like it's reasonable for someone allegedly giving you performance enhancing drugs, keep records with their names. That seems kind of strange to me.</s>SHAUGHNESSY: It could be an elaborate hoax to make somebody look bad. On the other hand, two or three of the people on the list were caught red handed by MLB last year and did serve 50-suspensions. Some are known to be dirty.</s>O'BRIEN: A-Rod's people said this, "The news about a purported relationship between Alex Rodriguez and Anthony Bosch are not true. Alex Rodriguez was not Mr. Bosch's patient. He was never treated by him. He was never advised by him. How unusual is it that that's a statement that is not coming from the Yankees, not A-Rod himself, coming from I guess some PR firm of Citric & Company.</s>SHAUGHNESSY: Right. I think Alex's representatives say there is no truth to the story. This will get dicey with the Yankees and MLB. Alex Rodriguez has five years remaining on a contract that will pay him $114 million over the next five years. He just had hip surgery, he has declining skill sets. So this could lead to a battle for the Yankees to try and get out from under that contract.</s>O'BRIEN: Walk me through those options. If they wanted to do it anyway, what are the options there?</s>SHAUGHNESSY: The option is a big war with the Major League Baseball Players Association which would consider this treason. Any kind of a violation of their basic agreement, they would not go for it. They would protect the player as they always do. But Yankees probably want out from under the contract anyway. Now they might have something to hang that on.</s>BERMAN: The may be able to force him to try to retire or something, leave voluntarily and take some kind of settlement. It's the ammunition for Yankees to use.</s>O'BRIEN: But if anything, Dan, we're proven down the road, whoever paid out some kind of settlement, I would assume would have legal grounds to get that back if down the road it were proven to be true, these allegations, right?</s>SHAUGHNESSY: Absolutely. You want to try and get your money. And this is a guy with 647 home runs in the big league. There was a time he was projected as the guy who was going to hit 800 and do it cleanly. That's all behind him now.</s>O'BRIEN: Interesting to watch. Dawn Shaughnessy, great to see you, as always, appreciate it. Still ahead this morning on STARTING POINT, we'll talk more about the new BlackBerry. Christine held one up. Not the new one. What it means for RIM, of course. And a brand new car recall to tell you about. We will have more than 1 million Toyotas and Lexus are considered unsafe. We're back in just a moment.