The New York Yankees and Major League Baseball asked the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals to prevent public release of a 2017 letter from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred to the Yankees that may contain evidence about cheating violations by the ballclub.
Last week, Judge Jed Rakoff granted a request to unseal the letter by attorneys representing a group of DraftKings daily fantasy players who sued MLB over the impact of the Astros’ and Red Sox’ electronic sign-stealing scandals of 2017-18. It was sealed from public view because the Yankees said that making the letter public would cause “severe reputational injury.”
Attorneys for the fantasy players say the letter may provide evidence that the Yankees were involved in a “more serious, sign-stealing scheme” than the ballclub’s technical violations cited by Manfred in 2017.
Manfred wrote in a press release then that the Yankees “had violated a rule governing the use of the dugout phone,” but that the “substance of the communications [over the phone] was not a violation.”
The letter is set to be unsealed on Friday, pending Monday’s emergency appeal.
