The trade talks were stalled. The Cubs had hit a wall in their efforts to unload Sammy Sosa. And the Orioles’ off-season was still a fruitless disappointment.
It was Jan. 12, and Orioles owner Peter Angelos greeted Cubs President Andy McPhail warmly at the baseball owners’ meetings in Scottsdale, Ariz. Then they sat for a private meeting.
McPhail made a strong pitch: The Cubs were going to trade Sosa, no matter what, but Sosa’s preference by far was to play in Baltimore.
Angelos tucked it away. If team vice presidents Mike Flanagan and Jim Beattie could swing the right deal for Sosa, without giving up too much talent and without leaving the club on the hook for too much money, it had to be considered.
That effort culminated Wednesday.
“I don’t want to take any credit for [the trade],” Angelos said. “Mike and Jim are the ones who put it together.”
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Multiple baseball sources described the process that brought Sosa to Baltimore as a complex puzzle whose pieces didn’t fit until late last week.
The Orioles had Sosa’s name on their list of possible acquisitions early in the off-season, but it was buried beneath free-agent sluggers Richie Sexson and Carlos Delgado.
At the winter meetings in mid-December, the Orioles had discussions with the Cubs about Sosa as they courted Sexson and Delgado. Back then, the Cubs’ asking price was much steeper.
The Cubs were willing to move Sosa and reliever Kyle Farnsworth, but they wanted reliever Jorge Julio and a corner outfielder, either Jay Gibbons or Larry Bigbie. And the Cubs were willing to absorb only a small piece of Sosa’s hefty contract.
At that cost? Forget it.
Eventually both teams’ options dwindled.
Baltimore made a $30 million bid for Sexson, but he signed with Seattle for $50 million. Then the Orioles made a $48 million pitch for Delgado, but he signed with Florida for $52 million.
The Cubs studied those Delgado talks closely, hoping to pounce on the teams that got left out in the cold.
Earlier in the winter the Cubs had had serious discussions with the New York Mets about Sosa. Those teams seemed like a good fit. The Mets would be putting Sosa’s supersized personality on the New York stage, and the Cubs would get Chicago native Cliff Floyd.
But the Mets signed free-agent center fielder Carlos Beltran, and when Delgado signed with the Marlins on Jan. 25, the Cubs waited for a call from Mets general manager Omar Minaya.
It never came.
Suddenly, it looked like the Cubs might get stuck with Sosa. They had serious talks with the Washington Nationals, but with baseball’s other 29 teams still holding ownership, the Nationals are working with strict budget restraints.
To trade Sosa to Washington, the Cubs would have had to absorb all but a tiny portion of his salary. It was time to make a stronger push toward Baltimore.
With Angelos’ blessing Beattie and Flanagan knew they could have Sosa if they could just get the price low enough.
So what was he worth? Despite his accomplishments, Sosa had compiled some serious baggage over the last two years.
Sure, he ranked seventh on baseball’s all-time home run list with 574, but there was the corked-bat incident in June 2003 and the ugly public fallout with manager Dusty Baker to end last season. Sosa is 36, and his statistics suggest he’s on the downward slide of a Hall of Fame career.
As the Sosa discussions gained steam, Flanagan and Beattie stuck to a strategy.
“What we wanted to do was twofold,” Flanagan said. “First we wanted to agree on the players. And then we would talk about the money.”
The Cubs backed off on their request for Julio or Gibbons, and the Orioles were able to use Jerry Hairston Jr. as a key chip, even though they had tried unsuccessfully to trade him for two years.
Baltimore officials also had soured on Mike Fontenot and David Crouthers, two high-round picks from the 2001 draft.
By noon Friday the teams had agreed on the players, so Flanagan called Angelos.
“I told him we were comfortable with the players and told him this is what we recommend on [Sosa’s] dollars,” Flanagan said. “[Angelos] said, `See if you can get it done.”‘
Flanagan and Beattie had determined Sosa was worth a one-year, $7 million investment.
Getting to that number was tricky, because Sosa’s contract pays him $17 million this year and included a clause that guaranteed him $18 million for next year if he were traded.
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Sosa agreed to waive the clause, and the Cubs agreed to pick up about $16.15 million of the remaining $25 million they still owed Sosa.
The Orioles are in for about $9 million, and they’ll save about $2 million more by not having to pay Hairston this year.
Mission accomplished.
“It was a labor of love all the way around,” Flanagan said. “It went extremely well, and the end result is Sammy Sosa is a Baltimore Oriole. We’re very proud of that.”