On Wednesday, Shyam Das will take up the question of whether the penalties imposed on four players arising from the bounty investigation: (1) were waived by the 2011 CBA; and (2) if not, nevertheless must be appealed not to the Commissioner but to Art Shell or Ted Cottrell.
On Monday, Das was fired from one of his other sports gigs.
As our drum-set-touching stepbrothers at HardballTalk.com explain it, Major League Baseball has exercised its unilateral right to dump Das, who had managed to avoid either management or the union firing him for 13 years. It’s believed that the scuttling of the Ryan Braun suspension served as the catalyst for change.
It’s unclear what, if any, impact the development will have on Das as he prepares to take up the bounty case on Wednesday. It’s possible that he’ll try, consciously or otherwise, to find a way to make both sides happy -- perhaps by making the league-friendly decision that the new CBA didn’t absolve players of any and all past sins and in turn making the player-friendly decision that one or more of the appeals should be heard not by Goodell but by Shell or Cottrell.
A separate grievance will be heard on May 30 by Special Master Stephen Burbank, who will address whether the penalties fall within his jurisdiction, under the argument that they ultimately arise from violations of the salary cap via paying extra money to players through the pay-for-performance/bounty system.