Ex-scout sues Yankees
Fired for alleged wrongdoing
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – The New York Yankees’ former scouting director in this baseball hotbed has filed a $3 million lawsuit against the team for firing him amid a probe of alleged bonus skimming from a top teenage prospect.
Ramon Valdivia, one of two scouts fired last year during a Major League Baseball investigation of skimming from contracts with Latin American players, said Wednesday he is seeking damages against the Yankees to restore his name and hopefully pave the way for his return to baseball.
“I have nothing against the Yankees,” Valdivia told the Associated Press on Wednesday. “I don’t have anything against the Major Leagues either to have accused me in its investigation. I believe that I have demonstrated that I did not steal anything and I want to return to work in baseball.”
The Yankees terminated the contracts in August for Valdivia and Carlos Rios, their director of Latin American scouting, for allegedly taking some bonus cash from 18-year-old Yankees prospect Kelvin De Leon.
De Leon, an outfielder signed by New York in 2007 when he was 16, was paid $1.1 million to attend their facility in a banana tree-lined meadow in Boca Chica, down the road from his coastal hometown of La Caleta.
Bolstering Valdivia’s case is an April decision by a Dominican judge ruling that De Leon defamed him by telling reporters the two scouts stole $100,000 of his signing bonus. The player was also ordered to do 64 hours of community service work for the comments.
The first hearing in Valdivia’s lawsuit against the Yankees was scheduled for Wednesday in a Santo Domingo court, but the judge postponed the session until Monday.
When Valdivia’s firing was first announced, Major League Baseball had been investigating alleged skimming involving Latin American operations for months. A few months following the start of MLB’s probe, the Chicago White Sox fired director of player personnel David Wilder along with two scouts in the club’s Latin American operations.
Valdivia said he was suspended on Aug. 1 and ordered to pay back his salary of $24,000 by a Major League Baseball arbiter.
A Yankees spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment.