Baseball

A lawyer who represented admitted gambler Howard Spira claims that baseball investigator John M. Dowd showed bias against then-New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner as early as last March, a week before Dowd’s investigation of Steinbrenner began.

In an affidavit signed last week, lawyer Roland Thau of the Federal Defenders Services unit in New York claimed Dowd told him privately in a meeting March 26 that he was intent on finding evidence against Steinbrenner. Dowd denied the accusation, saying that he never met alone with Thau.