The conversation was about money, how much Kerry Wood should be paid for becoming the next Doc Gooden, meaning only Gooden’s good parts, of course. What to pay, how long to pay it, when to start, that sort of thing.
“Three hundred thousand,” Cubs outfielder Henry Rodriguez said, eavesdropping. Huh? Only $300,000?
“Five hundred thousand,” Rodriguez said, and wouldn’t Wood love to have Rodriguez on the other side of the negotiating table? One more sneer and Wood would get a million, which he should, but probably won’t.
I can give away someone else’s money as easily as Rodriguez can, and I didn’t once work for the Montreal Expos, who never paid anybody and never kept anybody any longer than the law required. But I say start at $1 million for Wood and go from there for at least four years. How about that?
“I don’t worry about that stuff,” Wood said.
So he says, but we all worry about money, even those who have more than they can spend, especially those who have more than they can spend. Who ever gave any of it back except Ryne Sandberg? And he had enough by then.
General Manager Ed Lynch said this will be moot “before the first pitch on Friday,” the day of the first spring game and the day the Cubs can give Wood whatever they want and he has to take it. For want of a better term, say patronize or swindle, this is called renewal.
“There will be no renewal,” Lynch said. “There will be reward.”
The player who finished second to Wood as NL Rookie of the Year, Todd Helton of Colorado, just signed for four years at $12 million, with this season at $750,000.
“Apples and oranges,” Lynch insisted, not indicating which fruit was worth more.
Someone who should know what he’s talking about told me the Helton deal will make the Cubs pay Wood around $800,000, but with only a one-year contract. Not a bad raise from $170,000.
“Anything the first three years is gravy,” manager Jim Riggleman said, meaning there is a labor agreement that gives a club the right to be as generous or stubborn as it wants to in the first three years of a player’s career.
Not that this is exactly a heartening point of view, since the first raise can set a player’s mood forever. Gravy? Hardly so to Jack McDowell, for example, who resented being low-balled by the White Sox until the day he left. Not any of Rodriguez’s former mates on the Expos, like, oh, pitcher Pedro Martinez, who had to go to Boston for the really big dough.
Nobody likes to pay pitchers early. That is why the Cubs lost Greg Maddux. Over money. Not so much the amount, but how and when it was tendered.
Baseball is inclined to make pitchers wait for arbitration, or for free agency, wait until, as Riggleman terms it, they have a “history.” Although they won’t say it outright, the Cubs are cautious about giving Wood what he surely is worth because they don’t know if he will last.
“With any pitcher, there is the question of durability,” said Lynch, who was a pitcher himself and not necessarily a durable one.
Wood certainly did not help his cause any by starting the spring as an outpatient. No fault of his own, but all the other pitchers were stretching and throwing while Wood was retching and throwing up. Why should this happen to the youngest and strongest on a team that is older and vulnerable?
There is the way Wood finished last season, elbow-injured for the final month, getting well enough to pitch and lose the last game of the season against Maddux in the playoffs.
And that’s enough of me taking the Cubs’ side in this. Because I say show him the money, show Wood, show his teammates, show Cub fans that the Cubs are taking the long view, that management does not consider last season some kind of serendipitous aberration.
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I will guarantee this: Kerry Wood will strike out 20 again before Sammy Sosa hits 66 home runs again.
Surely Wood, in only his second year, is worth as much as the Cubs ever paid Danny Jackson, or paid Jose Guzman or all the several lives of Mike Morgan. Whatever the Cubs do will tell Wood whether they think he is the next Roger Clemens or the next Mike Harkey.
“I’m very aware of how special Kerry is,” Lynch said. “I saw every game he pitched, every pitch he threw last year. I saw the excitement in the stands and in the dugout. I saw all those `We Got Wood’ T-shirts.
“We recognize what a fierce competitor Kerry is and what an extraordinary talent he is. We will find a common ground for the both of us.”
The Cubs can’t blow this one. Just can’t.