Fired Angels employee names players he says used his illegal product
The text message from then-Houston Astros star Gerrit Cole to former Angels visiting clubhouse manager Brian “Bubba” Harkins was sent Jan. 17, 2019, at 11:39 a.m.
“Hey Bubba, it’s Gerrit Cole, I was wondering if you could help me out with this sticky situation,” the pitcher wrote, adding a wink emoji. “We don’t see you until May, but we have some road games in April that are in cold weather places. The stuff I had last year seizes up when it gets cold.”
The exchange between Cole, now the New York Yankees ace, and Harkins, who was fired last March for providing illegal ball-doctoring substances to visiting pitchers, was submitted in Orange County Superior Court as evidence Thursday by an attorney claiming Harkins was made a “public scapegoat” in baseball’s efforts to crack down on the use of foreign substances.
Harkins, who spent almost four decades with the Angels, was dismissed after the Angels learned through an MLB investigation that he was providing a blend of sticky substances to visiting pitchers to aid their grip of the baseball.
Harkins, 55, filed a defamation complaint against the Angels and Major League Baseball in Orange County Superior Court on Aug. 28. The Angels and MLB filed a motion to dismiss the complaint on Nov. 2.
In an opposition to the motion, filed Thursday, Harkins claimed many Angels used his concoction of rosin and pine tar over the years, “including Troy Percival, Brendan Donnelly, Tyler Chatwood, Kevin Jepsen and, most recently, Cam Bedrosian, Keynan Middleton, Yusmeiro Petit, Luke Bard, Matt Andriese, Dylan Peters, Jose Suarez and Dylan Bundy.”
Percival, the Angels closer from 1995 to 2004, acknowledged in September that he taught Harkins how to make the mixture of pine tar and rosin in spring training “mostly because it was so dry in Arizona and the balls were so slick out there.”
Harkins also claimed that MLB has evidence implicating several star pitchers — including Cole, Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Felix Hernandez, Corey Kluber and Adam Wainwright — for using foreign substances to improve their grip on the ball.