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News roundup: Jim Leyritz, Mark Teixeira, Mo, sports media

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A few news items of note on an afternoon before a long weekend:

  • Another sad story comes our way concerning Jim Leyritz. The former Yankee and former MLB.com personality has been arrested on charges of domestic abuse. Leyritz’s ex-wife Karrie called the police after Jim, according to the Sun-Sentinel report, “dragged her out of bed, struck her twice and pushed her on the floor.” The Miami Herald has a different take on the situation. Leyritz’s lawyer denies the assault, and police say the former Mrs. Leyritz changed her story a few hours after initially reporting it to the police. Leyritz goes on trial Sept. 14 for his 2007 DUI arrest following an accident that left another driver dead.

  • At 11:59 p.m. this evening All Star Game balloting ends, and as of earlier this week, Mark Teixeira found himself just 40,000 votes behind Kevin Youkilis for the AL’s first base slot. Head on over to MLB.com to vote. Yankee fans can vote for Teixeira 25 times per e-mail address, and while you’re at it, vote for Ian Kinsler too. He’s holding onto a very slim lead over Dustin Pedroia.

  • Joe Posnanski has profiled Mariano Rivera. Do you need to know anything more about it? Just read the article.

  • From around the Yankee Blogosphere: Rebecca looks at some top MLBers who had success at AA. The Jesus Montero buzz is building. Fack Youk revisits Dave Righetti’s Independence Day no hitter and wonders what could have been if the Yanks hadn’t moved Righetti to the pen. Sound familiar?

  • Finally, for the sports journalism junkies among us, Harvard’ Nieman Journalism Lab just wrapped up a four-part series on the shifting media power in sports. With more teams forming regional sports networks, more leagues creating their own TV networks complete with allegedly unbiased news coverage and more blogs gaining readers every day as newspapers see their circulation numbers decline, the world of sports journalism is undergoing something of a paradigm shift. In the series at NJL, Justin Rice focuses mostly on baseball to explore how sports coverage has responded to and embraced the Internet and where sports media is going.

Leyritz, jailed Friday, now released

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Or: As the Jim Leyritz Saga Turns. Last Friday, as you might remember, former Yankee Jim Leyritz was jailed for defying his pretrial sobriety mandate. The case’s prosecutors claim that The King attempted to drive his car with alcohol in his system “on at least four occasions,” so Circuit Judge Marc Gold signed a warrant for his arrest. Leyritz’s attorney said he’d dispute the claim, and it appears that he has won.

I’ll let Leyritz’s attorney explain why his client was released:

“When Judge Gold issued that order, he had no jurisdiction to issue it,” said Leyritz’s attorney David Bogenschutz.

So he’s out on a technicality, I guess. Here’s a sentence from the CBS 4 report that has me baffled: “Bogenschutz doesn’t dispute the allegations but claims his client ‘misunderstood’ his restrictions.” So his attorney doesn’t dispute that he attempted to drive while drunk, the very action that got him in this mess in the first place. So does that mean that Leyritz “misunderstood” that he can’t drive his car while he’s drunk? That’s what it sounds like to me.

If you want to watch the CBS news report, you can watch it here.

Leyritz’s bail revoked

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Per the AP, former Yankee Jim Leyritz found himself back behind bars earlier today when he violated the terms of his bond. According to authorities, Leyritz, who will go to trial for DUI Manslaughter charges on May 25, had been drinking while out on bail. Leyritz’s lawyer disputes these claims and has already filed a motion for release and an emergency hearing. This whole saga has been one tragic story.

Leyritz: ‘I was not at all responsible for the accident’

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Jim Leyritz sat down with two Daily News reporters to talk about his fatal DUI accident. In the first interview since December’s crash, Leyritz talked about the psychological and emotional impact the accident had on him. Surprisingly, when talking about the victim, Fredia Ann Veitch, Leyritz claimed that his car had been parked at a red light when she went through the light and hit him. If true, he’ll face a heavily reduced sentence after his trial, set to begin in January, wraps up. But the reality is that Leyritz was still behind the wheel with a BAC of nearly twice the legal limit.

The news gets worse for Jim Leyritz

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Two stories of note as the Jim Leyritz saga continues. None of the news is good for the former Yankee and one-time World Series hero.

Leo Standora at the Daily News notes that Leyritz’s BAC was twice the legal limit three hours after his fatal auto accident in December. The details are a bit chilling:

Fort Lauderdale cops said Wednesday a blood test taken nearly three hours after the 3:20 a.m. collision registered a .14 alcohol level. The legal limit in Florida is .08. The amount of alcohol in blood reaches its highest level about an hour after drinking.

A second blood test taken at 7:12 a.m., nearly four hours after the crash showed a .13 level…

Investigators who charged Leyritz with manslaughter said he was clearly drunk, citing his “red watery eyes, flushed face and the odor of an alcoholic beverage.” Leyritz stumbled, couldn’t follow instructions from cops, and missed three of six attempts to touch his nose with his finger, police said.

Still, his lawyer has said the case is “certainly not a slam dunk.” David Bogenschutz scoffed at the notion client had no defense.

I’m not a lawyer — yet, at least — but I have no idea what sort of defense Leyritz’s lawyers are going to conjure up here. It seems to me that they would be better off accepting a plea deal.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that Fort Lauderdale police have said that Leyrtiz will face an additional manslaughter charge. Based on my reading of the Florida sentencing guidelines and the state’s definition of manslaughter as a felony of the second degree, Leyritz may be facing up to an additional 15 years in prison.