Feeding the Monster

by Seth Mnookin

  Over the next several weeks, the Red Sox would make plenty of news. The team did, indeed, sign Terry Francona as its new skipper—the interview with the former Philadelphia manager was, John Henry said, the single best interview he’d ever had in baseball. Francona seemed to intuit the need to combine a deft interpersonal approach with the utilization of as much information as he could possibly get his hands on. It was clear that Francona would never eschew the detailed reports the team put together, as Grady Little did when, before the 2003 playoff series with the A’s, he failed to even hold a hitters meeting for the Red Sox. The team also signed free agent closer Keith Foulke to a guaranteed three-year deal worth $20.75 million, with a $5.75 million option for 2007. The 31-year-old Foulke had gone 9-1 with 43 saves and a 2.08 ERA for Oakland in 2003, and was considered one of the game’s elite relievers. It had already been a busy offseason. The rest of January and December would make the previous six weeks seem like a vacation.

  Chapter 29

  The A-Rod Chronicles

  AFTER THEIR INITIAL DISCUSSIONS, both the Red Sox and the Rangers tried to keep word of a potential A-Rod trade quiet. In early November, commissioner Bud Selig gave Henry and Rodriguez permission to meet in order to discuss a possible deal. It was an unusual move—teams are generally prohibited from negotiating with players before a trade has been made—but the desire of the Rangers, the Red Sox, and Rodriguez to get the deal done convinced Selig to make an exception. The meeting at Henry’s house in Boca Raton was also unusual because Henry and Rodriguez met without Scott Boras, Rodriguez’s agent and the man generally considered one of the shrewdest negotiators in the business. “We were concerned that we’d be less likely to have a deal with A-Rod if he didn’t take a lead role in the negotiations,” says Lucchino, a longtime Boras adversary. “If we just left it to Scott, we didn’t think we’d be able to get from here to there. Scott’s a very tough and difficult and time-consuming negotiator.” Since Rodriguez had said emphatically that he wanted to come to Boston, the Red Sox were hoping they’d be able to restructure his contract, which still had around $180 million remaining on it, to be more palatable to the club. “We knew he’d be involved—we weren’t trying to sidestep him entirely,” says Lucchino of Boras. “We were just trying to get a little momentum going with respect to this deal because of the player’s initiative.”

  Rumors about a possible swap began to circulate by the middle of November. When, on November 17, Rodriguez won the American League’s Most Valuable Player award (David Ortiz placed fifth, Manny Ramirez sixth, and Garciaparra seventh), he spent most of that day’s obligatory conference calls with reporters answering questions about where he’d be playing in 2004.

  Then, on Saturday, December 6, the Herald’s Tony Massarotti broke the news about the face-to-face meeting between Rodriguez and Henry. Massarotti’s scoop led to a frenzy of media coverage around the country. Garciaparra, who was in Hawaii honeymooning with Mia Hamm, whom he’d married just two weeks earlier, says hearing that the Red Sox owner had been personally wooing another shortstop was hurtful and insulting. Within days, Garciaparra and his agent joined the fray, with Garciaparra calling Boston’s sports-radio station, WEEI, from Hawaii to say publicly that he wanted to remain in Boston. That same day, Arn Tellem called John Henry’s discussions with Rodriguez “a slap in the face to Nomar.” Garciaparra’s goal, Tellem said, “which we’ve communicated to the Red Sox, has always been to return to the Red Sox and play out his entire career in Boston.” No mention was made of Tellem telling Theo Epstein that the Red Sox would be better off trading Garciaparra than offering him $12 million a year. Henry, furious, responded by calling Tellem’s comments “the height of hypocrisy.”

  Garciaparra says that he hadn’t yet learned of the Red Sox’s four-year offer for $12 million a year at this point, and therefore couldn’t have told Tellem that he was so offended by the offer that he wanted to be traded. (Tellem, who wouldn’t comment for this book, did arrange for Garciaparra to speak in an on-the-record interview.) Multiple sources on the Red Sox have independently confirmed the fact of Tellem’s requests to the team, making it seem likely that Garciaparra’s agent was fudging his client’s position a bit in order to increase leverage with the team. This isn’t unusual in baseball, where players rarely insist they be kept informed of every stage of the negotiating process. From the first days of their careers, ballplayers are told that team owners should in no way be trusted; after all, owners want to sign players for as little money as possible, and they don’t think twice about trading or getting rid of a player who is no longer useful. Agents often become a kind of all-purpose confidant and advisor, and their advice is rarely questioned.

  But the agent’s actions and the player’s best interests don’t always coincide. It seems likely that when Epstein made the Red Sox’s four-year, $12 million a year offer to Tellem immediately after the 2003 season, Tellem thought he’d be able to get the team back up to $15 million a year by telling them Garciaparra would rather be traded than sign such a deal. After all, there was no reason for Tellem to think at the time that the Red Sox were seriously considering a future without Garciaparra on the team. Instead, the Red Sox took Tellem’s request that the team trade Garciaparra at face value. Tellem, says Henry, “made it pretty clear that we wouldn’t be able to sign Nomar.” The Red Sox might have kept on pursuing Rodriguez regardless, but this made the decision a whole lot easier.

  Whatever the situation, Garciaparra insists that he thought the $15 million a year, four-year deal was still on the table. When, immediately after the spat between Henry and Tellem erupted in public, the Red Sox leaked to the Globe that Garciaparra had turned down the $60 million offer the team had made in spring training, Garciaparra was shocked.

  “I was like, ‘Whoa, what is going on here?’ ” Garciaparra says. “Since when did I turn it down? At what point did I reject this? I’m scratching my head.” If Garciaparra wasn’t upset before, he definitely was now, and the many months of negotiations were only fueling his paranoia. (At one point during the 2003 season, Garciaparra had confided to friends that he thought management was instructing the team’s grounds crew to rough up the dirt in front of his shortstop position so he would have a harder time fielding balls. Garciaparra believed this was done so he would make more errors, lessening his value before he signed a new deal. He also told at least one person he thought the team was bugging his phone.) Just as upsetting as the front office’s stance was the press coverage of the potential trade. Everyone, it seemed, preferred Alex Rodriguez. Garciaparra, once seen as the heir to Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski, was the golden boy no longer.

  By mid-December, newspapers around the country were reporting that a Rangers–Red Sox deal was all but completed. Boston would send Manny Ramirez (as well as some cash to help pay the $98 million still owed him) and minor league pitcher Jon Lester to the Rangers. The Rangers would send Rodriguez to the Sox, and Rodriguez, in return for getting the chance to play for a contender, would reduce the annual value of the years left on his deal. A corollary deal would send Garciaparra to the Chicago White Sox for outfielder Magglio Ordonez.

  And that was supposed to be that. Garciaparra’s teammates readied themselves for a new shortstop, a prospect that they were frankly looking forward to. “When you’re talking about a guy who’s going to be a leader and be the face of the organization, that’s Alex Rodriguez,” Kevin Millar said on December 16 on ESPN. “Manny leads in the batter’s box and Nomar prepares himself to play hard every day but you’re talking about a leader in Alex Rodriguez…. I mean, A-Rod’s the best in the game.”

  Because of the high profiles of the players and the enormous sums of money involved, officials at Major League Baseball and the players association, the union for professional baseball players, had joined in the discussions even before a deal had been finalized. Gene Orza, a top union official, had given Rodriguez the requisite permission to discuss a restructuring of his contract with the Red Sox. According t
o an article by The Boston Globe’s Gordon Edes, Orza also called a top official in Major League Baseball’s central office and said, “I want you to get word to Larry [Lucchino] 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.” Soon after, Lucchino and Orza had a conversation in which Orza reminded Lucchino that any reduction in the average annual value of a player’s contract needed to be offset by some other “added benefit” that the player received.

  The Red Sox and Rodriguez ended up working out a deal in which Rodriguez would cut approximately $4 million a year off the last seven years of his deal in return for some licensing rights and the ability to declare free agency at different points during the remaining years of his contract. When the two sides presented the deal to Orza, he was dumbfounded. No one had signed a contract for as much as $20 million in years, Orza said. That made the offer of free agency essentially worthless; there was no way Rodriguez would be offered a more lucrative contract in the future. Orza made a counterproposal he said the union would be able to accept, in which the Red Sox would save a total of about $12 million as opposed to $28 million. The Red Sox initially rejected Orza’s figure, but both sides assumed they’d keep working toward a compromise.

  Then, on the same night in which Orza had presented his proposal, Larry Lucchino issued a statement. “It is a sad day when the players association thwarts the will of its members,” Lucchino said. “The players association asserts that it supports individual negotiations, freedom of choice, and player mobility. However, in this high-profile instance, their action contradicts this and is contrary to the desires of the player. We appreciate the flexibility and determination Alex and Cynthia Rodriguez have shown in their effort to move to Boston and the Red Sox.”

  The move was typical of Lucchino. Despite his unprecedented record as a CEO and despite the high esteem in which his many admirers held him, Lucchino had a hair-trigger sense of being slighted and often seemed to be spoiling for a fight. Now, not only was Orza angry, but Rodriguez, according to people close to him, was upset, both that Lucchino would give the impression he was speaking for Rodriguez and that Lucchino would draw Rodriguez’s wife, Cynthia, into the picture. By trying to create the impression of a rift between the union and Rodriguez, baseball’s highest paid player, Lucchino actually made it less likely Rodriguez would make a stand about the issue. Rangers owner Tom Hicks was annoyed as well, and within days, the Boston newspapers were reporting that Lucchino had been pulled off of the A-Rod negotiations and that Tom Werner had taken over.

  Lucchino characterizes what happened differently. “I was frustrated,” he says, talking both about the union negotiations and his efforts to get Hicks to reduce the amount of money he was asking for to augment Manny Ramirez’s salary. “At one point, I was talking to Tom and John and I said, ‘One of you guys should try to talk to [Hicks], maybe you’ll have better luck.’ And Tom said, ‘I’ll call him.’ ” John Henry agrees with Lucchino’s recollection. “Larry went for Christmas to see his mother in Pittsburgh,” Henry says. “We didn’t send him out of town. Tom still tried to get the deal going, but it wasn’t like we’d lost faith in Larry.” In the coming weeks, there would be various attempts to resurrect a deal—all to no avail. By January, the Rangers and the Red Sox had ceased discussions.

  Before long, the media began lacing into the Red Sox CEO, which tapped into Lucchino’s sensitivity about always being the one to get blamed when things went wrong. Peter Gammons was one of the first to finger Lucchino, repeating his charges on ESPN and on his frequent radio appearances in Boston. On WEEI, Gammons said that Rodriguez was not a member of the Red Sox because of “Lucchino’s infamous blast, [his] personal attack on Gene Orza.” The local papers weren’t being much kinder: the Globe wrote that “Lucchino’s temperament and hubris had something to do with the…failed negotiations.”

  Theo Epstein, in contrast, was only growing in stature. In late 2003, Esquire profiled the young GM in its Genius issue. “All of the uncertainty about Epstein’s age lasted about as long as it took for him to put together a delightfully entertaining ball club that made the playoffs and won more regular-season games than any Red Sox team since 1986,” the article read, adding that Epstein had brought the Sox “into the modern baseball economy.” Somehow, even the Red Sox’s tumultuous offseason was being portrayed as a sign of Epstein’s acumen. “Epstein’s confidence is one of the most encouraging things the Red Sox have going for them these days,” wrote Gerry Callahan in the Herald. “He can waive his highest-paid player or trade his two-time batting champ/folk hero, and not turn away in shame when he comes face-to-face with the disgruntled player.” The press wasn’t telling Bostonians anything they didn’t already think; Epstein had been transformed into a folk hero in his hometown, and “In Theo we trust” became a kind of mantra for Red Sox Nation.

  If the aborted A-Rod deal highlighted a distancing in the public perception between Lucchino and Epstein, it also amplified a growing rift between the two men. Although he never said so publicly, Epstein was inclined to agree with some of what was being said about his boss—Lucchino’s comments had hindered the trade discussions. The fact that Epstein even felt this was itself a violation of Lucchino’s code of honor, which dictated that subordinates must always be loyal to their bosses, in thought as well as in word and action.

  “[Larry] believes that the loyalty in which he takes a bullet for his bosses is the same loyalty that his subordinates, he would hope, would have for him,” explains Charles Steinberg, one of Lucchino’s staunchest supporters on the team. “You are loyal up…. It’s not that you say to your boss, ‘You’re right, bud, anything you say, bud, anything you want, bud.’…[You] argue, challenge, debate. And when it’s over, you loyally carry out what your boss wants you to do.” This time, Epstein wasn’t taking the bullet, which meant Lucchino was feeling the full brunt of the media’s fire.

  Soon, the Red Sox CEO became convinced that Epstein had been one of the people who’d been telling the media that Lucchino was to blame for the offseason’s follies. “Someone told Larry that Theo was at the bottom of that,” says a high-ranking Red Sox executive. “At that point, Larry thought that Theo had committed a sin, and he never moved off of that. From December 2003, [Lucchino] operated on the assumption that [Epstein was] throwing [him] under the bus.” Lucchino didn’t confront Epstein about the perceived backstabbing. The relationship between the two men would never be the same.

  Part V

  The World

  Champion Boston

  Red Sox: 2004

  Chapter 30

  Welcome to the Jungle

  THE RED SOX would begin spring training in 2004 with both Manny Ramirez and Nomar Garciaparra, two players they’d openly tried to get rid of, on their roster. The Yankees, meanwhile, had pulled off one of baseball’s most stunning coups, snatching up Alex Rodriguez in a trade for second baseman Alfonso Soriano after the Red Sox and the Rangers had ended their discussions. New York would open the season with Rodriguez at third, Derek Jeter at shortstop, and the always dangerous Gary Sheffield in right field. Not only had the Sox lost out on A-Rod, they’d been embarrassed by the Yankees, who seemed to be operating more effectively and efficiently.

  Even without all the offseason drama, the Red Sox looked to be in for a tumultuous year. There was, to start with, the issue of the players who had contracts expiring at the end of the year. While right fielder Trot Nixon quickly agreed to a three-year contract extension that would run through 2007, and Jason Varitek and David Ortiz seemed content to do their jobs and worry about their deals later, Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Lowe, and Pedro Martinez would all require lots of attention.

  With all of this going on, the Sox came into camp loose and determined to avenge their painful playoff loss in 2003. Players like Ortiz and Kevin Millar hadn’t been in Boston long enough to become fixated by the Curse or to worry they’d always
lose to New York. Johnny Damon, who spent much of the offseason with lingering wooziness as a result of his concussion, arrived at spring training with a flowing beard and mangy hair and said he’d spent the winter chasing cars to stay in shape. He was soon dubbed “Jesus,” and he greeted fans by flicking water at them from his water bottle and intoning, “Bless you, bless you all.” Soon, T-shirts featuring a beatific Damon ringed with the inscription “W.W.J.D.D.: What Would Johnny Damon Do?” became a hot-selling item. When asked whether the previous year’s loss convinced him of Boston’s cursed fate, pitcher Bronson Arroyo quipped, “What curse? We have Jesus on our side.”

  Garciaparra, the most popular Red Sox player of the previous decade, now found himself on the outside looking in. Not only had management tried to dump him in the offseason, but the clubhouse’s personality had clearly changed. “He was really worried about what was being said about him,” says Damon. “Nomar was Mr. Boston, and then the media started coming down on him a little bit.” The issue, says Damon, wasn’t money—it was respect. “There’s always all kinds of disparities in this game,” he says. “Guys are always jealous if someone’s making more than them.”

  By early March, it seemed as if even the team’s contract negotiations would take a backseat to other concerns. Nixon injured his back driving to the Sox’s spring home in Florida, and Garciaparra was sidelined with what was described as tendonitis in his right Achilles tendon, an injury that predictably became another flashpoint. Garciaparra insisted he suffered the injury in a March 5 exhibition game against Northeastern University, although he never was able to identify who hit the ball that struck him, and no one on the Red Sox seemed to have seen the incident. There were suggestions that Garciaparra had hurt himself playing soccer with his wife, Mia Hamm. And, while speculation didn’t reach print, more than one reporter noted that for the second time in three years, Garciaparra was suffering from a suspicious tendon injury—a warning sign of steroid use.