A federal court ruled Monday that a letter penned by Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred about the 2017 Yankees sign-stealing investigation should be made public.
The 2017 letter has been reported on but never revealed in full to the public, and the Yankees say it must be kept private to protect them over a lawsuit to which the team wasn’t a party, the New York Post reported.
The Yankees also fear being tied to the massive and embarrassing Astros and Red Sox sign-stealing scandals.
But the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals disagrees with the Yankees and said the letter that Manfred wrote to Yankees general manager Brian Cashman about the Red Sox “AppleWatchGate” scandal would not necessarily harm the Yankees’ reputation.
The court insisted that the team’s argument that the letter would be harmful to the team’s reputation “carries little weight” and that the letter’s contents are in the public interest.
“Disclosure of the document will allow the public to independently assess MLB’s conclusion regarding the internal investigation (as articulated to the Yankees), and the Yankees are fully capable of disseminating their own views regarding the actual content of the Yankees Letter,” the court wrote in its decision.
The letter supposedly details parts of MLB’s investigation into sign-stealing incidents allegedly committed by the Yankees using a dugout phone in 2017. It was also alleged that some players were set up in front of video monitors to try and read the opposing team’s signs, then relayed that info to second base during the game.
Chief judge Debra Ann Livingston also pointed out that portions of the letter have already been made public.
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