|
From
the Top of the Deck
Email:
Dan
McCourt
Website: Take Him
Downtown
WELL
IT'S OFFICIAL. As I pen these
words on Presidents Day, February
16, 2004, even the Yankees Web
site says so now. The Bombers
have a new third baseman, and its
mega-millionaire Alex Rodriguez,
the shortstop of the Texas
Rangers until a couple of days
ago. Boston fans are generally
angry, and fans of small-market
teams that dot the landscape are
aghast that the Yankees have
gotten the best player in
baseball, again.
A major American
spectator sport that was on the
brink of ruin just a few days ago
due to the growing BALCO scandal
(the what?) is on the ropes
again. But this time the villain
is a more familiar one: George
Steinbrenner, the owner of the
New York Yankees. As the wildest
of baseball off-seasons comes to
a close, fans across the country
are now directing their derision
at a familiar target.
Confounding many
of their fans, the Yankees
allowed three veteran members of
their vaunted starting rotation
to leave this winter, and
installed the flawed 2003 ALCS
hero, Aaron Boone, at third base.
They signed a big bat in Gary
Sheffield, yes, a leadoff ("bad")
guy in Kenny Lofton, and several
vets for a leaky pen that has
confounded them for years. But
many of the faithful threw their
hands up in dismay when 2001
World Series star Curt Schilling
was installed in Boston, and he
was later joined by closer Keith
Foulke, repairing two of the
shortcomings in a team that came
within five outs of unseating the
Yanks as the American League
representative in the World
Series last year. The trade of
young talent and money to plug
the hometown Bronx rotation
barely lowered the howls to
groans.
But even worse
for the spoiled (who wouldn't
be?) hometown faithful, the Yanks
sat on their hands as the
courtship dance between John
Henry in Boston and Tom Hicks in
Texas was initiated, and the
potential A-Rod/Manny Ramirez
trade dominated the headlines.
The laughs at how Boston would
handle fielding two of the best
shortstops in the American League
turned to murmurs of concern as
the White Sox offered Nomar
Garciaparra a place to display
his skills, while proffering
young outfield dynamo Magglio
Ordonez to fill the
about-to-be-created gap in
Boston's left field in return.
The news that Alex was willing to
restructure his contract (read:
make less money) to escape last
place in Texas was not greeted
with joy, and there were a few
bad moments where the deal
appeared ready to go through,
after major league baseball had
made a point of giving all the
parties as many extensions as
they would require to get it
done.
What, aside from
the fact that the Mets and
Yankees compete for the richest
city in the world's spectator
dollar, do the Mets have to do
with this deal the Red Sox
whiffed on, and the Yanks finally
pulled off?
But
Yankee fans breathed a sigh of
relief as the Union nixed the
deal because Rodriguez was giving
up more of his contract's value
than was allowed in the most
recent collective bargaining
agreement between the sport and
its players. The dance continued
through several more strings of
rumors but it gradually became
clear that Red Sox ownership and
management had drawn a monetary
line in the sand at a point
beyond which they would not go.
Texas owner Hicks stood
steadfastly on the far side of
that line.
Meanwhile, the
Yanks' cross-town rivals, the New
York Mets, who have been
suffering from a mediocre talent
level in their outfield personnel
both in the field and at the
plate for years, failed to make a
good-faith offer to the guy
generally considered to be the
best outfield talent in the game,
using his 2003 injury to cover
the fact that their 11th-hour
offer was the lowest in
guaranteed money that Vladimir
Guerrero would hear from anybody.
Why do I bring this up? What,
aside from the fact that the Mets
and Yankees (in name, anyway)
compete for the richest city in
the world's spectator dollar, do
the Mets have to do with this
deal the Red Sox whiffed on, and
the Yanks finally pulled
off?
What isn't
trumpeted much in New York papers
these days is that when Nelson
Doubleday and Fred Wilpon headed
a group of investors that
purchased the Mets in August
1980, 80 percent of the funding
was provided by Doubleday and his
publishing company. Little was
heard of the ups and downs
experienced by these co-owners in
the mid-eighties as the Mets
built a playoff team that paid
off for them big-time in the form
of the 1986 World Championship.
They struggled with player
contracts and personnel decisions
in the years that followed, but
managed to stay competitive for a
few years, including the shocking
loss to the eventual World
Champion Dodgers in the 1988
National League Championship
Series.
Then the club
fell on hard times. But after a
series of atrocious player moves
resulted in some ugly last place
finishes in the mid-nineties, the
team made another play for glory.
Taking full advantage of
soon-to-be former Florida owner
Wayne Huizenga's dismantling of
the 1997 World Champion Marlins,
they acquired some solid
pitching, and found themselves at
a crossroads during the 1998
season. Big hulking banger Mike
Piazza, the power-hitting catcher
for the Dodgers, was moved
(temporarily, the whole baseball
world knew) to the Marlins in a
contract squabble. The
Wilpon-controlled front office
expressed no interest in the
burly former lower-round
selection, but Doubleday pleaded
in the papers and behind the
scenes that the Mets take the
chance and spend the money to
make this upgrade. Nelson
prevailed, the Mets traded for
Piazza, and two years later they
played in the World Series
against the Yankees.
But apparently
Doubleday had spent all his
capital and his bluster on that
former move, because when the
player who might have been the
final piece in the puzzle in
Flushing made a public appeal to
play for the Mets during that
Subway Series in Shea Stadium,
the Flushing front office replied
with guns a-blazing. Rather than
pursue the best offensive
ballplayer available, the Mets
shut down negotiations almost
immediately. Rejected, Rodriguez
found Texas and their money, but
only after he was forced to look
elsewhere. Wilpon and Doubleday
finally parted ways in 2002, and
the denouement of their rivalry
was not a good one for the team's
fans. The voices of caution, of
"spend less," of
middle-of-the-road salary for a
team playing in the Big Apple,
won out. Nelson took his spending
ways and retreated, and Wilpon
took a tight and solid grip on
the financial reins.
Meanwhile, a
"show me the money" fan in Boston
in the months that followed would
have had an even more confusing
time untangling the
behind-the-scenes details of that
club's sale. It all involved a
convoluted deal where Mr. Henry
sold his Marlins to Jeffrey Loria
of the Expos with MLB first
loaning Loria the money and then
purchasing the Expos themselves,
and a guy who wasn't willing to
spend the money to grow a
contender in Florida took over in
Boston. And now, after an
admitted slew of payroll
additions and adjustments, that
same group continued to refuse to
budge the further $1-2 million
per year that it would take to
make Alex Rodriguez one of the
most revered players in Red Sox
nation. With the figures between
a deal and no deal so close, it's
hard not to look back on the
Boston team purchase in 2002.
John Henry succeeded in acquiring
the Red Sox, even though the
offers by both Miles Prentice and
Charles Dolan exceeded the $660
million that Henry's group
offered by roughly $100,000
apiece. What if, huh?
And then a
seemingly minor news item in
January changed everything.
Having eschewed a slew of other
choices to fill their infield and
outfield, many of them more
costly, the Yankees had re-signed
Aaron Boone, daring him to do
better in a second stint in the
South Bronx. They liked his
defensive range to his left, his
power, and his speed on the
bases. They would expect to see
better coverage of the line, an
enhanced batting average, and a
few less strike outs following a
few less 0-2 counts. But Boone
tore up his knee playing
basketball, with all the viable
2004 third-base options gone from
the market.
So
let's assume the extremely
improbable scenario that Alex's
dominance ends once he hits the
big time in New York...
For weeks, the
Yanks plastered low-cost
band-aids on their damaged
prospective 2004 infield, while
other teams stood and watched the
Rangers act as if all was fine,
claiming that Rodriguez would
gladly play out his years in last
place in Arlington, even serving
as team captain. The two other
teams who had come closest to
getting Rodriguez out of the
backwater in Texas stood idly by,
and the Yanks scrambled to come
up with a third base solution.
The Mets, who refused to step to
the plate in 2000, announced that
they wouldn't sign a shortstop
when that was the position of
choice of their top prospect.
(Then they went out and signed a
shortstop.) The Red Sox stood
pat. When it became clear that
A-Rod's need to be out of Texas
was greater than his need to play
his favorite position, Rodriguez
came face-to-face with the one
thing he hadn't confronted yet: a
team willing to put its cards on
the table.
Little concerns
remain. Alfonso Soriano, sent to
Texas to acquire Alex, has a huge
potential upside, an atrocious
2003 postseason notwithstanding.
But as their myriad critics will
hasten to tell you, the Yankees
rarely hesitate to exchange a
prince of potential for a star
who has proven that he can play
now. I've been here for some
time, and it's occasionally a
painful lesson, I'll admit. A
nation of baseball fans, led by
those in Flushing and Boston,
will now hold their collective
breaths for the next six weeks,
hoping that some accursed result
befalls the Yankees now that they
have made their move. On February
16, 81 years ago, archaeologist
Howard Carter and his team
unearthed the tomb of King
Tutanhhamen, and the world
thrilled to the (largely
exaggerated) reports that one by
one, each searcher came to an
unfortunate end. In a fit of
wishful thinking, negative vibes
have been traveling all around
George Steinbrenner, Alex
Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Brian
Cashman, and Joe Torre for the
last several days.
These fans and
non-fans argue that the Yankees
always get the best players,
regardless of cost, forgetting
that the Yanks were ready to go
into the season with Aaron Boone
at third. The Yanks dealt with
this situation in good faith,
reacting to need, a logical step
one assumes all teams operating a
going concern would follow.
Certainly not all could afford
Rodriguez, but Anaheim afforded
Guerrero and Colon, and Baltimore
ponied up for Lopez and Tejada.
Meanwhile the Mets fiddled while
Flushing burned in 2000, and the
Red Sox let as little as $2
million per year stop them in
their tracks two months
ago.
And then again
(and this from Yankee haters and
fans alike), they argue that
Soriano could be a star. Alphonso
Soriano is one of four Yankees
who share January 7 as their
birthday. One of the others is
the Hall of Famer Johnny Mize,
who was acquired by the Yanks
much later in his career than
Alex Rodriguez. In the more than
10 years preceding his arrival in
the Bronx, Johnny recorded the
following firsts in league
offensive stats: OPS, three
times; batting average, once;
slugging percentage, four times;
runs, once; times on base, three
times; doubles, once; triples,
once; home runs, four times; rbi,
three times; and extra-base hits,
four times. It compares well with
A-Rod's stats: OPS, none; batting
average, once; slugging
percentage, once; runs, three
times; times on base, none;
doubles, once; triples, none;
home runs, three times; rbi,
once; and extra-base hits, one
time.
So let's assume
the extremely improbable scenario
that Alex's dominance ends once
he hits the big time in New York.
Those who predict that nothing
good will come from this new
pairing can take heart, for
instance, in the fact that Mize
never cracked a number-one
offensive stat again once he
became a Yankee. But there is a
pretty overwhelming positive
number associated with Johnny
Mize and his stay with the
Yankees too. He played in
Pinstripes five years, and the
Bronx Bombers won five World
Championships during that
time.
February 16,
2004, Alex Rodriguez is a Yankee.
Is this a good day for Yankee
fans? As one who was not eager
for a Rodrguez signing one week
ago, I'll tell you this.
Encouraging a cultural habit that
would permeate much of Western
civilization for millennia into
the future, the Roman Catholic
Pope Gregory the Great decreed on
February 16, 600, that
henceforth, "God Bless You" would
be the correct response to a
sneeze. In a seemingly totally
unrelated event, George
Steinbrenner, the 73-year-old
owner of the Yankees, passed out
at a memorial service weeks ago.
And also, the anniversary of the
death of another flamboyant
baseball owner, Charley Finley,
falls on Saturday, as he left us
in 1996 at the age of 77.
Is that a sneeze
I hear coming out of Tampa? Small
matter actually. Even if it's
only for being the proactive
owner of the baseball club I have
loved for almost 40 years, God
Bless You, George
Steinbrenner!
|
