This suit was juuust a bit outside.
A failed Yankees prospect who never got out of High-A ball claimed in a rambling, eight-figure lawsuit against the Bombers that the club conspired to keep him from reaching the majors — all “to protect the career of Derek Jeter.”
Garrison Lassiter, 30, registered a lowly .244 batting average with just four home runs across parts of five minor-league seasons as a third-baseman, but the real reason his career stalled, he claims, is because Jeter was out to get him.
Lassiter, who played from 2008 through 2012, was kept down “ALL IN EFFORT TO PROTECT CAREER OF DEREK JETER SHORTSTOP OF NEW YORK YANKEES,” he claimed in the disjointed suit, filed in federal court in North Carolina in December 2018 only to be dismissed by a judge in May 2019.
Jeter — a virtual lock to be among the game’s next class of Hall of Famers when voting results are announced later this month — retired following the 2014 season, two years after Lassiter was cut loose by the Yankees.
The 79-page filing — first reported Thursday by NJ.com — is supplemented with letters Lassiter wrote to front-office executives across Major League Baseball, ahead of the case, seeking a sympathetic ear for his conspiracy-laden tale of woe.
“Its [sic] blatantly obvious that Mr. Derek Jeter controlled the entire Yankees Organization,” wrote Lassiter in one 2018 letter to Texas Rangers general manager Jon Daniels. “[Y]ou’re an intelligent man. You graduated from Cornell. Why can an athlete like myself not play?
“I’ll never play for the New York Yankees,” he continued to Daniels. “I’m not interested in a Team that doesn’t understand the importance of giving respect to the Players that help the Organization win. These are the facts big dawg.”
To then-Baltimore Orioles manager Buck Showalter, Lassiter wrote in 2018, “I CANNOT GET ON THE FIELD DUE TO THE NEW YORK YANKEES TRYING TO CONTROL MY CAREER!
“ITS BLATANLY [sic] OBVIOUS MR DEREK JETER CONTROLLED THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION WHEN I WAS A PROSPECT IN THE ORGANIZATION”
The suit, which does not name Jeter as a defendant, was brought by Lassiter himself, who writes in an attached personal statement that he attended Massachusetts School of Law after falling out of baseball and onto hard times.
“Many nights I’ve slept in my Car and I’m put in a situation that I do not like,” he writes. “Without a Home and no Money to pay my bills, up to this point I have Educated myself by attending Law School, Earning a Masters Degree and an undergraduate specialization in Sports Administration.”
Lassiter’s lack of legal experience shows in a convoluted detailing of the damages, which makes unclear exactly how much he was seeking.
It appears to outline approximately $35 million in earnings he believes he would have earned, spanning not only baseball but also football and basketball — though he admits that at least one of the figures is a “guestimate” [sic].
Lassiter brought a separate suit last month against the Cincinnati Reds, alleging that that club didn’t give him a fair shot today because of his age.
Lassiter did not immediately respond to a request for comment at the three email addresses listed in his filing, and a phone number he gave as his was not in service as of Wednesday.
The Yankees did not immediately respond to a request for comment by The Post, but previously declined comment to NJ.com, as did the Reds.
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