Alex Rodriguez was alone when he walked past the magnificent Christmas trees that adorned the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel and went out into the bracing chill of the Manhattan night.
It was after 1 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 16, and East 57th Street long since had emptied of the throngs of shoppers that had filled its exclusive boutiques. The bars and restaurants were quiet, too, so Rodriguez, dressed in a camel-colored overcoat, went unnoticed as he pondered the possibility that had kept much of New England in thrall for weeks: that the best young player in baseball was about to become the new shortstop of the Boston Red Sox.
Fenway Park was where he had made his major-league debut, as an 18-year-old for the Seattle Mariners in 1994, and it was Boston that Rodriguez had handpicked as the place where he intended to pursue his dream of winning a World Series, an ambition that had become a distant hope for his current team, the downsizing Texas Rangers.
The Red Sox wanted him too. Theo Epstein, the general manager who was less than two years older than the 28-year-old Rodriguez, had flown to New York that night from baseball’s winter meetings in New Orleans. For the previous two hours, Epstein had presented proposals to Rodriguez, modifications on the offer Red Sox owner John Henry had made when he traveled through rainstorms to visit Alex and Cynthia Rodriguez in their Miami home a day earlier. We can make this work, the Red Sox told him, if you are willing to let us rework your contract, which called for Rodriguez to be paid a stunning $179 million over the next seven years.
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After three straight last-place finishes in Texas, Rodriguez was willing. For this trade to happen, Epstein was telling Rodriguez, he would have to agree to reduce the value of his contract by $28 million, or $4 million a year for seven years, an unprecedented proposal. There was another financial component: Rangers owner Tom Hicks, who just two days after the Red Sox lost the American League Championship Series to the Yankees had offered Rodriguez for Nomar Garciaparra and a young pitcher, was demanding that the Sox not only deliver superstar Manny Ramirez but also subsidize slightly less than $25 million of Ramirez’s contract.
That’s where matters stood in the early morning hours of Dec. 16, when Rodriguez returned to the suite where his wife was waiting. He picked up the phone and called Epstein in his room.
“I’m ready for Round 2,” he recalled saying.
An hour later, the men had reached an agreement. A weary but excited Rodriguez felt the most significant trade in baseball history, the first involving a reigning MVP, was at hand.
But Cynthia Rodriguez had her doubts, which she expressed to Epstein as he was about to leave.
“Gene will never go for this,” she recalled saying.
The next day, her prediction was proved true. Gene Orza, associate general counsel for the players union, rejected the Red Sox’s proposal on the grounds that it violated collectively bargained rules against reducing the value of an existing contract. Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino blasted the union a day later, after the Red Sox had turned down a union counterproposal, and pronounced the deal “dead.” Hicks, furious at what he perceived as being misled by Lucchino, blew up at him and refused to talk further with Lucchino, dealing with Red Sox Chairman Tom Werner instead.
And by the following Tuesday, Dec. 23–despite an extraordinary, legally questionable offer by Rodriguez to pay Hicks out of his own pocket to facilitate a trade–the deadline Hicks had set for a deal passed without an agreement. The deal, he said, was “totally, totally dead.”
This trade failed to happen, even though nearly all of the principals were in agreement it was a good thing: Rodriguez, the Red Sox, the Rangers, Commissioner Bud Selig and the union. During the negotiations, the futures of five All-Star players were in limbo, as another trade, one in which the Red Sox would have sent Nomar Garciaparra and relief pitcher Scott Williamson to the White Sox for outfielder Magglio Ordonez, was kept on hold, a no-go if Ramirez and Rodriguez did not switch teams.
In the end, the deal collapsed under the weight of too much money. Rodriguez could not buy his way to freedom, no matter how willing he was to sacrifice millions to play for the Red Sox. The Red Sox, as intrigued as they were with Rodriguez, refused to deviate from a business model that calculated the cost of A-Rod as too high. Hicks, a dealmaker of the first order, could not close this one. And Selig, despite taking unprecedented measures to help along a deal he felt was in the game’s best interest–Hicks had called Selig in early November to approve a secret get-acquainted lunch meeting between Henry and the Rodriguezes–was powerless to make it happen.
Hicks starts ball rolling
Alex and Cynthia Rodriguez had lunched at Henry’s Boca Raton mansion on a Sunday in early November. Rodriguez surprised Henry with his knowledge of hedge funds, the money market in which Henry had amassed his fortune, and joked with Henry about sharing some of the secrets that had made him a billionaire. They spoke of their mutual connections to Florida–Rodriguez grew up in Miami and lived there in the off-season; Henry had owned the Florida Marlins–but mostly, Rodriguez was impressed with the passion and affection Henry expressed for the Red Sox and New England.
About six weeks earlier, the Red Sox had taken the virtually unparalleled step of placing a superstar on irrevocable waivers, giving the other 29 major-league teams the chance to claim Ramirez for the waiver price of $20,000. Ramirez’s agent, Jeff Moorad, commended the Red Sox for creating an opportunity for Ramirez to go to the archrival Yankees. But the Yankees, like every other team, passed on Ramirez, whose contract calls for more than $20 million a year.
When Boston’s postseason hopes again had been crushed in the early-morning hours of Oct. 17 in Game 7 of the ALCS by the extra-inning loss to the Yankees, Hicks moved quickly. On Sunday, Oct. 19, Hicks called Henry and Lucchino, asking if they would consider trading Garciaparra and young pitching to the Rangers for Rodriguez.
The Red Sox asked for a few days, then called Hicks and asked to see Rodriguez’s contract, the richest in sports, a 10-year, $252 million deal signed on Dec. 12, 2000. On Sunday, Oct. 26, the day after the Florida Marlins beat the Yankees to win the World Series, Hicks and Rangers general manager John Hart met with Lucchino in Hicks’ suite in New York. Epstein and Henry participated by phone.
The Red Sox told Hicks they would not part with Garciaparra, even though they feared losing him to free agency, but would consider dealing Ramirez. At that time, Hicks called the Rodriguez-for-Ramirez swap a “non-starter,” but he and Hart later determined such a trade had merit, and Hicks called Lucchino to request Henry meet with Rodriguez.
Garciaparra in crossfire
After Selig took the unusual step of allowing Boston to talk with Rodriguez even though a deal was not in place, Henry issued his invitation to Alex and Cynthia. He was reluctant to do so, fearing he might alienate Garciaparra, whom he insisted he still hoped to re-sign.
“Almost immediately after this meeting, I heard from Theo that the gulf between [agent] Arn Tellem’s demand and the club’s view of the right number for Nomar was so wide that he felt we were not going to be able to re-sign our shortstop,” Henry wrote by e-mail in response to questions.
“Negotiations between Mr. Tellem and Theo deteriorated, and Mr. Tellem suggested it would be best to trade Nomar now. After that, the Rodriguez/Ramirez trade began to gather steam.
“The media frenzy began when Tom Hicks publicly acknowledged my confidential lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez. Mr. Tellem went on the offensive against the Red Sox publicly. I answered back. Nomar went on the radio. And the Red Sox began to look at what it would take financially to bring Alex Rodriguez to Boston.”
The Red Sox insist they were not happy with the breakdown of their relationship with Garciaparra, who called the team’s flagship station, WEEI, while on his honeymoon with Mia Hamm to express his dismay at the negotiations with Rodriguez.
“I had a hard time imagining finally winning a World Series in Boston without Nomar being there at that great moment,” Henry said. “Nevertheless, we faced the realities and determined to move forward.”
While Tellem, according to Henry, was asking in the wake of Boston’s reduced offer that Garciaparra be traded, Rodriguez was taking steps to facilitate the trade. Early in the process, he contacted Orza, generally considered second in power in the players association to executive director Donald Fehr.
Rodriguez told Orza he intended to approach Boston and the club initially wanted to speak directly to him, circumventing his agent, Scott Boras, who had clashed in the past with Lucchino.
On the weekend before Thanksgiving, Rodriguez also ran into Selig at Sammy Sosa’s 35th birthday party in the Dominican Republic. Once Selig heard directly from Rodriguez how much he wanted to play in Boston, he felt justified in making an exception for the Rangers, and the game’s best player, to try to reach an accord with the Red Sox.
Customarily, a team is not allowed to negotiate with a player under contract to another team unless the teams have reached an agreement. At that point, Selig will grant a 72-hour window to work out whatever salary issues the deal depends on. In Rodriguez’s case, Selig felt the stature of the player and the complexity of the financial issues justified giving the teams and the player what amounted to an open-ended window.
Stern warning from union
With some reservations, Orza encouraged Rodriguez to meet with the Red Sox under those conditions but reminded him that any restructuring of his contract would have to be approved by the Players Association. Orza then called Rob Manfred, the executive vice president of labor relations for Major League Baseball.
“I want you to get word to Larry,” Orza told Manfred, according to a source involved in the negotiations, “that we’ll do everything within our power to get this thing done–it’s great for baseball and we love Alex–but I hope Larry doesn’t abuse the process, as he is wont to do.”
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In Boston’s view, trading for Rodriguez made sense only if these conditions could be satisfied: They could come to terms with the Rangers, they could ease the burden of Rodriguez’s contract (with the union signing off on their plan), and they could turn around and trade Garciaparra and receive value in return.
Two days before Thanksgiving, when Hicks met with Lucchino in San Diego, he not only outlined the money he wanted from the Red Sox along with Ramirez, he said the Rangers also wanted left-handed pitchers Casey Fossum and Jorge de la Rosa and a minor-leaguer. Three days later, Boston shipped Fossum and de la Rosa to the Arizona Diamondbacks for pitcher Curt Schilling, satisfying its desire for a front-line starter.
The Red Sox argued that Hicks would not get any financial relief beyond the $80 million in savings he would realize in exchanging the remaining seven years of Rodriguez’s contract for the five years left on Ramirez’s deal. But Hicks maintained it made no sense for the Rangers to deal Rodriguez unless they received immediate financial relief that would allow them to obtain more pitching. Free-agent pitcher Sidney Ponson was a prime Texas target.
Angered by the public airing of the negotiations, and his belief that most of the leaks were coming from the Texas side, an annoyed Henry shut down negotiations for almost a week. But in the meantime, the Red Sox worked on a restructuring of Rodriguez’s contract. Hicks and Lucchino asked Henry to present the Red Sox’s proposal to Rodriguez.
The day after Henry went to see Rodriguez, Epstein called from the winter meetings in New Orleans to tell Henry and Lucchino he had struck a deal to send Garciaparra to the White Sox for Ordonez. Williamson was also in the deal for two White Sox pitching prospects.
But the Garciaparra-Ordonez deal would proceed only if the Red Sox succeeded in getting A-Rod. The proposal the Red Sox made to Rodriguez, which he took to the union, was this: In exchange for giving up an average of $4 million a year over the last seven years of his contract, Boston was offering Rodriguez the opportunity to become a free agent after two years and every year thereafter, whereas his existing contract allowed him to opt out of the last three years, in which he was due to be paid $27 million a year.
They also offered him a signing bonus up front, as well as marketing rights to the Red Sox logo, much like the deal Cal Ripken had when he was playing for the Baltimore Orioles.
Counterproposal, then collapse
When Orza was presented with the proposal, he was dumbfounded, though he had been apprised of the Red Sox’s plans by Manfred. In his view, giving Rodriguez the right to opt out of his contract early was essentially worthless, because the way the market for players was headed, Rodriguez could not be expected to match the money his contract stipulated.
The Red Sox, hoping to stay close to the luxury-tax threshold, were attempting to lower the average annual value of Rodriguez’s contract to $20.25 million, nearly a 35 percent drop from $27 million.
If he allowed the Red Sox to do so, Orza reasoned that the bargaining position of every player in the game would be affected, as general managers could point to Rodriguez and say, “Look at the direction the market is going if the best player in baseball is taking a 35 percent cut.” It did not matter, Orza believed, that such a cut still would leave Rodriguez the highest-paid player in the game. It violated what the union considered a basic principle, even if Major League Baseball thought differently and said it was contemplating a legal challenge to the union’s position.
Orza proposed a restructuring that lopped off an average value of $2 million a year from the last seven years and deferred an additional $1 million a year off the last three years. The added benefit for Rodriguez? The same deal for tickets in the .406 Club and a hotel suite on the road that Schilling had in his Red Sox contract, and an assigned value of $10 million to the licensing deal.
The union’s proposal and the Red Sox’s proposal were about $16 million apart. Orza thought the Red Sox might be able to accept the union’s amount; the Red Sox insist they made it clear to the union they could not move off their proposal. Lucchino ripped the union, and Hicks, who felt Lucchino had given him reason to believe the Red Sox would address the Rangers’ need for cash, lost his temper with Lucchino and refused to talk with him further, which is when Werner stepped in. Lucchino and Hicks have not talked since.
Selig, who had given Boston a 72-hour window to negotiate directly with Rodriguez, closed that window after the Red Sox rejected the union counterproposal, furious at what Selig perceived was a union power play to break the deal.
Rodriguez, meanwhile, still had not exhausted his efforts to make the deal work. Even as Hicks heard Werner express a willingness to find some way to bridge the gap, Rodriguez offered to relieve Hicks of an obligation to pay $3 million of his signing bonus.
Most remarkably, on Dec. 23, the day Hicks had set as the deadline to get the deal done, Rodriguez and Hicks talked of a plan in which Hicks would drop his demand for $15 million from the Red Sox if they paid Rodriguez the full value of his contract. Rodriguez then would pay back Hicks $15 million. Hicks called Selig to see if such an arrangement was acceptable; Selig expressed some uncertainty. Hicks insisted he would not go along with such an arrangement unless it was all done openly.
That afternoon, a few minutes before 5 p.m., Hicks called Rodriguez and told him that the sides had failed to produce an agreement.
By then, Rodriguez had accepted the truth: He will likely remain with Texas.