In 2005 Major League Baseball officials told Alex Rodriguez to stay away from illegal high-stakes poker games after he was caught playing with Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Tobey Maguire and other A-Listers on the Hollywood scene and now it looks like he might be in trouble for ignoring that warning.
According to Star Magazine the All-Star baseball player was playing in illegal high-stakes games as early as two months ago, buying into one game for $40,000.
For their part MLB officials claim to have no knowledge of the game with public relations representative Patrick Courtney telling RadarOnline.com that “this is the first we have heard about this and we will look into it.”
News of Rodriguez’s involvement began to surface when Hedge fund trustee Brad Ruder was incarcerated for running a Ponzi scheme and players of his high stakes games were named, notably Tobey Maguire who is said to have won $300,000 in those games and is now being sued to return that money in order to pay off Ruderman’s debts.
According to a source speaking with The Star :
“Initially, A-Rod came to the game and simply watched…But once he knew what it was all about, he bought into the game.”
When ESPN New York asked Rodriguez about the game he said:
“I’m not really going to get into any of that right now,” he said. “We’re going to focus on good little baseball here against a great team. … Any basketball questions? Any boxing questions?”
It will be interesting to see how far MLB’s front office will go with their investigation.
