On July 14, 2016, former Major League Baseball pitcher Neiman Nix filed suit in a New York federal court on allegations the MLB tried to kill his businesses. Nix alleges that through purposeful actions to harm his reputation, telling clients and prospective clients he was involved in performance-enhancing drugs, and hacking his social media account, his business’ character has been destroyed.
Nix played five season with the Milwaukee Brewers and various minor league teams before retiring in 2003 due to a series of arm injuries. He used his professional athletic experience and understandings about his arm injuries to devise training methods designed to prevent similar arm injuries. In 2006, he opened the American Baseball Institute which was a player development academy for those with MLB aspirations. More recently, in 2012, he opened DNA Sports Performance Labs Inc., a training and sports medicine clinic in Miami Beach, Florida.
All seemed fine until the 2013 Biogenesis performance enhancing drugs scandal broke which tainted many sports medicine clinics, especially those in South Beach. Nix claims that as a result of the Biogenesis scandal the MLB began an unjustified investigation into DNA Sports Lab beginning in 2011. In his complaint, Nix alleges the MLB began contacting current and former players at his American Baseball Institute telling them Nix is lying about how frequent MLB scouts visit his camps; MLB started making phone calls in 2013 to his clients asking about performance-enhancing drugs and DNA Sports Labs which caused clients to drop Nix; MLB made false representations about performance-enhancing drugs being available at DNA Sports Labs causing an influx of body-builders asking for substances which harmed the business; and that MLB began a systematic campaign to attack DNA Sports Labs’ social media accounts including his YouTube, Facebook, and PayPal accounts. In support of his allegations Nix cites a non-compete agreements all former players have not to work with current pro baseball players indicating any investigation into his practices was unjustified. Further, Nix has hired a YouTube employee as an expert who testified that YouTube directly received reports that Nix was associated with Biogenesis and was peddling illegal drugs to players on the Social Media platform.
In a statement, MLB claims the suit is frivolous and provides specific references to the fact that illegal performance-enhancing substances are found in DNA Sports Labs’ best-selling product IGF-1.