Feeding the Monster

by Seth Mnookin

  When the news about Ramirez being placed on waivers was leaked, the response was swift and furious. The move, the Herald wrote, “tests the boundaries of weird” and “strongly suggests the Boston franchise has cast planning to the wind and blindly is flailing about in the aftermath of [its] difficult defeat [in the 2003 American League Championship Series].” As Jeff Moorad began telling anyone who’d listen that his client would love to play for the Yankees, Ramirez’s teammates showed the extent to which they’d been upset by his behavior in 2003. “If he doesn’t want to pull on the same rope as the rest of his teammates, then you know what, he can go somewhere where he can be happy,” Kevin Millar said, while David Ortiz, who had made $1.25 million in 2003, said, “If I’m making that kind of money, I’d be happy even if I’m playing for the Tigers.” (The Tigers finished the 2003 season with a record of 43-119, baseball’s worst single-season record since the 40-120 record the New York Mets compiled in their inaugural 1962 season.) “That’s some money, $160 million.”

  At the same time, Theo Epstein and Arn Tellem were renewing their discussions about Garciaparra’s contract. Tellem was still pushing for a four-year deal whose average annual value was around $17 million. But the Red Sox felt that during the course of the season the market had shifted even more.* Two-thousand three’s top free agent, the Montreal Expos’ Vladimir Guerrero, wasn’t expected to command a deal for even $15 million annually, and Oakland A’s shortstop Miguel Tejada, the 2002 American League Most Valuable Player, was expected to sign for somewhere around $8 million.† The Red Sox were now thinking more along the lines of $12 million a year, still a sizable amount more than the initial offers Tejada was getting. But Tellem wouldn’t budge. If that was the best the Sox could do, he said, then they should simply try to trade Garciaparra before the season began.

  In the meantime, no one claimed Ramirez off of waivers, which meant that by the middle of November, the Red Sox had a $20 million per year left fielder who wanted out, an $11 million per year shortstop who was so insulted by the team’s offer for an extension that his agent had told the Red Sox to trade him, and in Pedro Martinez, a $17.5 million per year starting pitcher who was already warning the team that if they didn’t sign him to an extension before the season began, he wouldn’t even speak with them once it was over. In the midst of all this, the Red Sox decided to pursue one of the most outspoken, controversial pitchers in baseball.

  *Although Garciaparra’s 2003 numbers were good, they were by no means outstanding. On his own team, he was tied for third in home runs, placed fourth in batting average, was fifth in slugging percentage, and tied for seventh in on base percentage.

  †In January 2004, Guerrero signed a five-year deal with the Anaheim Angels worth approximately $70 million, or $14 million per year. Guerrero, in addition to being three years younger than Garciaparra, was by 2004 clearly a superior offensive player. Tejada, who is also three years younger than Garciaparra, ended up signing a six-year, $72 million contract with the Baltimore Orioles worth $12 million a year. Guerrero went on to win the American League MVP award in 2004.

  Chapter 28

  “This Is About Winning

  the World Series”

  THE BOSTON RED SOX drafted Curt Schilling in 1986, the same year Roger Clemens was steamrolling his way to his MVP season. The two hurlers appeared similar: Both were hulking, 6-foot-4-inch right-handed power pitchers. There was, however, a major difference between them. Clemens had a tireless work ethic to go with his superior natural talent, while Schilling was a flake who talked too loud, drank too much, and jawed off in public. When, in 1988, the Sox traded Schilling (who was still in the minors) and Brady Anderson to the Baltimore Orioles for pitcher Mike Boddicker, there was no outcry, no concern that the Sox might have just gotten rid of a man who would become one of the most dominant pitchers of his generation. Indeed, in his first four years playing major league ball—three of which were spent with the Orioles and one with the Houston Astros—Schilling threw only 145 innings, had a record of 4-11, and looked like he was on the fast track toward becoming another hot prospect with plenty of natural talent and not enough determination or fortitude. In the 1991 offseason, the 25-year-old Schilling was working out in the Astrodome while Roger Clemens, then still the Red Sox ace, was using the facility’s weight room. “I was kinda going through the motions of getting my time in, whatever I had to do,” Schilling said later, describing that day. “Roger wanted to talk to me.” Great, thought Schilling. He loved talking about pitching. But Clemens didn’t want to discuss the vagaries of the split-fingered fastball. “I went over there and he proceeded to chew my ass off for about an hour and a half,” Schilling said. “I had lost my father three years before that, and I had not really had that guy in my life that said, ‘Listen, you know what? You need to sit down and shut up and listen. This is how it’s going to work.’ ” Clemens told Schilling he was wasting his career and cheating the game. “I didn’t turn it around that day…but I think it started that day,” Schilling said. “That was the biggest step.”

  As far as the Astros were concerned, it was too late. Houston had given up on Schilling after just one year, and before the 1992 season, he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies for reliever Jason Grimsley. It was in Philadelphia, with Clemens’s admonishments still ringing in his ears, that Curt Schilling changed his approach to the game and began the hard work that would transform his career. His first year with the Phillies, Schilling won 14 games. He led the team in wins and strikeouts, and his 2.35 earned run average placed him fourth in the league. The next year, he led the Phillies’ run to the World Series and began to establish his reputation as one of the best postseason hurlers in the history of the game, winning the National League Championship Series MVP award.

  Schilling stayed in Philadelphia for eight and a half years until, midway through the 2000 season, he was traded to Arizona. His pitching seemed to improve as he got older. In 1997, at 30, Schilling struck out 319 batters. For many of his years with the team, the Phillies were awful: Following the team’s 1993 trip to the playoffs, Schilling’s Phillies teams finished last twice, and never placed higher than third. It was during these lean years that Schilling first met and became close to Terry Francona, who managed in Philadelphia from 1997 through 2000.

  At the same time that he was building his reputation as a big-game pitcher, Schilling was also becoming known as a blowhard and an attention hog. More eloquent and outspoken than many baseball players, Schilling took it upon himself to let everyone—players, reporters, talk-radio hosts—know what he thought about everything ranging from politics to the management of the team. It was true that he’d become one of the best-prepared pitchers in baseball. It was also true that he took pains to let everyone know this. One of his former managers nicknamed Schilling “Red-Light Curt” because of how he gravitated toward television cameras, and Phillies general manager Ed Wade, referring to a starting pitcher’s workload of one game out of every five, once said Schilling was “a horse every fifth day and a horse’s ass the other four.”

  In Arizona, Schilling was teamed with Randy Johnson, and the two became the twin terrors of the National League. In 2001, Schilling’s first full season with the Diamondbacks, he led the league in wins with a 22-6 record and posted a 2.98 ERA to go along with his 293 strikeouts, while Johnson went 21-6 with a 2.49 ERA and 372 strikeouts. The two pitchers were first and second in the National League in strikeouts, innings, and earned run average. It would be the first of two consecutive years in which Johnson won the Cy Young Award as the outstanding pitcher in the league and Schilling came in second. In the postseason, Johnson and Schilling almost single-handedly carried the Diamondbacks to their World Series victory over the Yankees.

  Two years later, the Diamondbacks were in rebuilding mode. Diamondbacks owner Jerry Colangelo decided that Schilling, who was signed through 2004, would likely be on the block. Schilling had a no-trade clause in his contract, and he let it be known that there weren’t a lo
t of teams he’d consider playing for and that he would need a contract extension before agreeing to a trade. He wanted at least two more years added on, which would take him through 2006, when he’d turn 40.

  “[My wife, Shonda, and I] wanted to go somewhere that we were familiar and comfortable with, and we wanted to be on a contending ball club for the remaining years of my career,” Schilling says. “I knew this was going to be the last contract for me. And the two teams that kind of jumped out at us were the Phillies and the Yankees.”

  It became apparent early on that the Phillies would not be suitors. “I made it very clear to them, through back channels, that I’d go there for a lot less than I ended up signing for, for a lot shorter period of time, because we wanted to go back to what we considered home,” says Schilling. But it wasn’t just about what Schilling wanted. He learned that he had burned some bridges in his first stint in Philadelphia, and returning to the team where he had made his name wouldn’t be a possibility. That left New York. Schilling relished the idea of playing on baseball’s biggest stage, and the Yankees, of course, were perennial postseason contenders. The Red Sox didn’t really even cross his mind. “Boston wasn’t a team I was even contemplating, because I didn’t know anything about them,” Schilling says. “I didn’t know anything about the organization or the people.”

  Still, the Red Sox approached the Diamondbacks and asked what it would take to get Schilling. The Yankees, intent on pursuing Montreal’s Javier Vazquez, had had only tepid discussions with Arizona, and it took only a couple of days for the Diamondbacks and the Red Sox to agree on a tentative package of players. When word leaked out that the Red Sox were interviewing Terry Francona as Grady Little’s possible replacement, Schilling decided he might be willing to go to Boston after all. Within 12 hours of Schilling’s informing Diamondbacks management that he’d consider going to the Red Sox, Boston and Arizona had finalized their deal: Schilling would go to Boston in return for pitchers Casey Fossum and Brandon Lyon and minor leaguers Jorge de la Rosa and Michael Goss.

  Now came the hard part: The Red Sox had to work out the details of a contract extension with Schilling. Under Major League Baseball rules, once a trade has been agreed upon for a player who has a no-trade clause, the player and his prospective new team have 72 hours in which to negotiate. As it happened, this time fell on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Day, and the Friday after Thanksgiving. Schilling, who prided himself on not using an agent, would represent himself.

  “We’d been nonstop preparing for a couple of days” in anticipation of making a deal, says Jed Hoyer, then an assistant to general manager Theo Epstein. The team knew Schilling was concerned about Fenway’s reputation for being a home run ballpark—Schilling, as a fly-ball pitcher, was susceptible to the long ball—so Epstein asked Bill James to work up a presentation on how Schilling could be expected to perform in Boston. The team’s baseball operations crew had put together DVDs illustrating how Clemens, who, besides being Schilling’s idol, had a very similar pitching style, had performed in Fenway. Epstein and Hoyer investigated Schilling’s personality, the best way to approach negotiations with him, what he’d expect from the organization, and what they could do to make him and his family feel comfortable in Boston. Schilling’s wife was very active in philanthropies in Arizona, and both Schillings prided themselves on their involvement in their community. Epstein and Hoyer integrated all of this into their planned sales pitch.

  On Tuesday, November 25, Hoyer and Epstein flew from Boston to Arizona. They brought with them a letter of introduction. “We thought it was a good way to start the negotiations,” says Hoyer. It was, they agreed, a way to give Schilling a chance to think about some of the issues they hoped to address before the two sides actually sat down to meet Wednesday. But the two young baseball executives didn’t know how to get the letter into Schilling’s hands. They ended up taking a limo to Schilling’s house and delivering it in person. Hoyer, who was 29 at the time, is less than six feet tall and looks as if he’s barely out of college. When he rang the Schillings’ bell, the 36-year-old Schilling answered the door in flip-flops and a T-shirt. Hoyer handed him the letter—awkwardly, he admits—and said they’d be back the next day at one in the afternoon.

  On Wednesday, Epstein and Hoyer met up with Larry Lucchino, who’d flown in from San Diego, and the three men went to the Schilling house. For the remainder of the day, the two sides talked about Boston, about the front office’s dedication to pitching, about ownership’s goals for the team. The Red Sox executives knew how fanatical Schilling was about preparation, and they assured him they were equally committed to planning for every pitch of every game. They also appealed to his ego. What’s one more championship for the people of New York, they asked. Win one in Boston, they told Schilling, and you’ll be a god throughout New England for the rest of your life.

  Schilling’s initial wariness was noticeably softening. “The preparation they did in getting ready was big for me,” he says. “It was impressive. It was clear, they’re a very forward-thinking group of guys, and I knew that was going to mesh with what I was trying to do. There was just a lot of common ground.” That night, the Sox made their initial proposal—three years with a club option for a fourth year or four guaranteed years at less money.

  Schilling contemplated the offer, pointedly playing with his gaudy World Series ring. “Look,” he said. “You guys are bringing me here for one reason. It’s not to make the playoffs. It’s to get beyond where you were last year and win the World Series. Let’s make that very clear.” Since that was the case, Schilling said, why not build in a World Series clause into his contract: If the team won the championship while he was in Boston, he’d get a raise for every year remaining on the deal. “I don’t want a clause that says, ‘If we make the World Series,’ ” Schilling said. “This is about winning the World Series. That’s all I care about. That’s what I’d be there for.”

  As Hoyer says, “We were like, ‘Yeah. That’s pretty cool.’ ” Lucchino had to return to San Diego for Thanksgiving, and as Hoyer and Epstein were preparing to leave, Schilling asked them what they were doing the next day. “This is your time,” Epstein said. “We’re just going to play some golf.” Schilling insisted the two join his family for Thanksgiving. “I’ll be insulted if you’re not here,” he said.

  Epstein and Hoyer spent Thanksgiving at the Schillings’ house, and after a couple of hours in which they ate turkey and watched football, they retired to Schilling’s study and began talking numbers. The Red Sox initially offered around $11.5 million a year, along with a $2 million World Series clause. Schilling wanted at least $13 million a year as a base salary. When Epstein and Hoyer finally left for the night, with one day left before their 72-hour negotiating window closed, they felt a compromise was still a long way away. So, too, did Schilling. “Shonda and I, after Thanksgiving Day, were excited about the possibility [of playing in Boston], but disappointed because we didn’t feel like it was going to work out,” Schilling says.

  Epstein and Hoyer returned to their hotel that evening, confident that Schilling would agree to sign if the Sox came up to $12.5 million a year. As Epstein called Henry and Lucchino to discuss the team’s offer, Hoyer, who felt under the weather, returned to his room. Epstein discussed the team’s other options with the team’s owner and the CEO. Montreal’s Vazquez still hadn’t been traded and free agent Bartolo Colon was also available. Both of those pitchers were younger and would likely require less money. But Schilling, they felt, was worth going up to $12.5 million.

  Hoyer, meanwhile, found himself in the throes of a vicious stomach virus that left him vomiting for much of the night. The next morning he tried to drink some Gatorade before going up to Epstein’s suite to type out the team’s final offer. While standing on Epstein’s balcony he became nauseated once again. “I was looking out at everybody sunning themselves and I felt it coming,” Hoyer says. “I tried to run back and ended up projectile vomiting in about three diff
erent places in Theo’s room.” After a hasty cleanup, Epstein and Hoyer set out to pick up Lucchino from the airport; from there, the three of them would drive back to the Schilling house to make the team’s final offer. (Lucchino had to give Hoyer a pair of socks from his bag, since the only remaining pair of dark socks Hoyer had were speckled with puke.) “I spent the rest of the day just trying to move as little as possible,” Hoyer says. “But since the three of us had been there on Wednesday, we thought we should all be there on Friday as well.”

  As the Red Sox executives were heading back to Schilling’s house on Friday afternoon, they were hopeful they could seal the deal, but they knew that if Schilling didn’t agree to their new offer, they’d have almost no time to renegotiate. When they arrived at Schilling’s house, they presented him with their latest offer. Schilling took the piece of paper on which they had written out all of the specifics—the World Series clause, the award bonuses, the club option—and was silent for several minutes. Finally, he looked up. “I think we’re really close,” he said. The final deal was for three years and $37.5 million—an average annual value of $12.5 million a year—with a $13 million club option for 2007. The option, along with Schilling’s $2 million raise, would vest automatically if Boston won the World Series. (For his part, Hoyer managed to avoid throwing up in the Schilling residence.)