Lou Gorman, a long-time, much traveled major league general manager, died April 1 at the age of 82, but he left a legacy of honesty about one former baseball commissioner, entrusting his story to another.
Gorman related his story to Fay Vincent several years ago when Vincent was visiting Fenway Park. That Vincent was in position to have Gorman tell him a tale of collusion as spawned by Peter Ueberroth was the unintended result of a request made by yet another commissioner, the incumbent Bud Selig.
“Three or four years ago,” Vincent related, recalling a telephone call from the Red Sox chief executive, “Larry Lucchino called and asked would I come to a game in Boston as their guest. I suspected Bud was behind it. I went. Lucchino said Bud really wants us to intervene with you.”
There was a connection that Selig thought might help achieve his purpose. Earlier in his executive career, Lucchino had worked in Baltimore when Eli Jacobs, a Vincent friend, owned the Orioles.
“’Bud is upset,’” Vincent said Lucchino told him, “’because you’re making critical comments. We’re having trouble making progress with the union because of your criticism. Bud feels very bad that you are criticizing him.’”
“We went back and forth,” Vincent said. “I said I like you, but I’m not going to stop answering the phone if the press calls me. I’m going to give them my view.”
Vincent was not shy speaking candidly about Selig because Selig had been one of the ringleaders in the move to oust Vincent as commissioner in 1992.
But the primary reason Vincent had been invited to Fenway became secondary as the day developed. Vincent said he watched the game and noticed that Gorman was in the box.
“Gorman was helpful in the New England wooden bat league,” Vincent said, referring to a pet project. “I knew him well.”
That’s why Gorman took advantage of Vincent’s unexpected presence. “He told me he wanted me to know a story,” Vincent said, “but he didn’t want me to use it. He said you should know the story, but please don’t use it until I go.”
The story, as Vincent learned, was about Roger Clemens, and why did Gorman want Vincent to know it?
“I am not clear why he told me,” the former commissioner said, “but my sense is he wanted someone to explain the Clemens loss by the Red Sox after he was dead. I think he felt he was falsely blamed for losing Clemens. I think I understand and he thought I was sympathetic to him because of our friendship.”
When Clemens left the Red Sox as a free agent following the 1996 season, Gorman was no longer the team’s general manager. Dan Duquette was and had been for three years. In fact, it was a comment by Duquette, who said the 33-year-old Clemens was in the twilight of his career, that seemed to prompt the pitcher to go elsewhere.
Gorman, however, was aware of another possible impetus that triggered Clemens’ departure.
In 1986 Clemens had a superb season, compiling a 24-4 record and a 2.48 earned run average and being rewarded with the American League most valuable player and Cy Young awards.
“Gorman wanted to sign him to a long-term contract and made a deal with the agent to pay him $1 million a year,” Vincent said, telling the story that Gorman told him that day at Fenway.
“Word got out,” Gorman told Vincent. “I got a call from Ueberroth and he asked me if I was about to sign Clemens to a $1 million-a-year contract.”
The conversation proceeded this way, Vincent said Gorman told him.
Gorman: Yes.
Ueberroth: That’s a disaster. I forbid you to do that.
Gorman: What do you mean forbid?
Ueberroth: I’m the commissioner and I forbid you to do it. It will hurt baseball.
Gorman: I’ve already agreed to do it. I have to do it.
Ueberroth: You can’t do what you want. I’m the commissioner and I forbid you to sign that contract.
“We went back and forth,” Vincent said Gorman told him. “I backed away and the agent was crazed and Clemens was crazed.”
Gorman told Vincent that Ueberroth said he couldn’t pay Clemens more than $500,000 a year.
Ueberroth denied Gorman’s story.
“There’s no truth to that,” he said recently by telephone from his Contrarian Group Inc. office in Newport Beach, Calif. “They would never ask and I would never have told them.”
Then, in an apparent allusion to collusion, which occurred during his term as commissioner (1984-89), Ueberroth added, “It’s so long ago. I would say no commissioner in the history of sports has been able to convince all the owners to do anything and they never will in the future.”
Ueberroth has long been considered a central figure in the owners’ collusion against free agents in 1985, ’86 and ’87. However, his name didn’t come up during Gorman’s testimony at a grievance hearing.
“Collusion breaks out and there’s a big thing in New York,” Gorman told Vincent, “and I’m called to testify in the case the union brought against baseball for collusion.”
“He thought he would be asked about what Ueberroth did and said,” Vincent said. “Ueberroth was in the middle of collusion.”
Unlike other baseball commissioners, Vincent has no problem acknowledging that collusion occurred because it preceded him, he found the conspiracy repugnant and he has long talked publicly about what he saw as the owners’ flagrant violation of the collective bargaining agreement. Arbitrators found the owners guilty in both cases they heard, and the owners settled them for $280 million.
“I had lunch with Walter Haas,” Vincent said, referring to the Oakland Athletics’ owner of that era, “and said I’m still getting condemned by Selig and others about collusion. He said, ‘I was involved and the others were involved.’”
Richard Ravitch, who was the owners’ chief labor executive during the 1994 players’ strike, is the only other management person I know of who has acknowledged collusion, but Vincent, in relating his conversation with Gorman, was the first person to single out Ueberroth for his leading role in it.
”I don’t think it occurred to anyone at the time that Ueberroth was orchestrating this,” Vincent said. “He said to the owners there’s nothing wrong with each one of you deciding on your own to do it. You just can’t do it collusively.”
At one owners’ meeting where Ueberroth issued his view, Vincent said, Ted Turner, then the Atlanta Braves’ owner, spoke up.
“’This is just bull,’” Vincent quoted Turner as saying. “’We’ve been doing this for years. We’ve tried that and it doesn’t work.’ The other owners were saying, ‘Ted, shut up.’ Here was Turner saying exactly what the owners were denying.”
Union lawyers weren’t privy to Turner’s revealing remarks, but Gorman was on the witness list, Vincent said, and he was terrified at the thought of having to testify.
“I’m a nice Catholic boy,” he told Vincent. “I don’t lie. I met with the lawyers in New York and told them I’m not going to lie. They said o.k., just don’t tell the story if they don’t ask about it. I was certain they were going to ask me about what Ueberroth did and said, but I went to the hearing the next day and I never was asked a question about Ueberroth.”
Gene Orza, the retired union official, was a key union lawyer in the collusion cases, but he said recently that he didn’t recall Gorman’s testimony or why he didn’t ask Gorman about Ueberroth’s role.
“It would have been blatant evidence of collusion,” Orza said but added, “I don’t recall it that way. I think Lou is mistaken.”
It seems unlikely, however, that Gorman would tell a tale in which he acknowledged being part of an illegal act and told of how worried he was that he might have to admit it under oath if it weren’t true. People might forget events, but they’re not likely to invent stories complete with dialogue with a baseball commissioner.
There is, on the other hand, one other person whose recollection doesn’t gibe with Gorman’s.
In his 1994 book, “Inside the Strike Zone,” Randy Hendricks, Clemens’ agent, recounts in detail his controversial contract negotiations with the Red Sox that winter and doesn’t write anything that Gorman told Vincent, not that Hendricks would have necessarily known details of conversations between Gorman and Ueberroth. But Hendricks doesn’t write about a $1 million-a-year contract that the Red Sox killed.
However, in a telephone interview, Hendricks said, “I remember we had a deal, then Lou said he couldn’t do that. He didn’t give me a satisfactory reason about it.”
Vincent suggested an obvious reason for Gorman’s not giving Hendricks an explanation.
“Of course,” he wrote in an e-mail, “there was no reason to give.”
NO SURPRISE IN GONZALEZ SIGNING
What a shocking development involving the Boston Red Sox. I’m not talking about their surprisingly poor start to the season they had been expected to dominate. I’m referring to their signing of Adrian Gonzalez, their first baseman, to a seven-year, $154 million contract. If those numbers sound familiar, maybe it’s because you read them here three weeks ago.
In the March 27 column I wrote that Gonzalez, who had only one year left on his existing contract, had agreed to the trade without getting a contract extension. “However,” I wrote, “soon after the season starts, Gonzalez will sign a new contract with the Red Sox, say a seven-year deal worth $154 million or so.”
By recalling that bit of prose, I am by no means suggesting that I am clairvoyant. What I am suggesting, however, is how transparent the Red Sox are.
In that March 27 column I suggested that the Red Sox and Gonzalez were engaged in a contract conspiracy. I’m not blaming Gonzalez; for $154 million, I might be willing to conspire with the Red Sox.
By waiting until after the start of the season to make the contract official, the Red Sox don’t have to add its average annual value of $22 million to their luxury tax payroll this year. They can wait to do that until next year and use Gonzalez’s $5.5 million salary this year. The difference could be the difference of having to pay tax or no tax this year.
The Red Sox said they waited until now to sign the contract to make sure Gonzalez had recovered from off-season surgery, but they did the same thing last April with Josh Beckett, signing him to a 4-year, $68 million contract the day after the season started.
I should point out that there is nothing illegal about the Red Sox practice, but they are also not fooling anybody, except some of the Red Sox writers, who appear to buy the team’s canard of an explanation.
“I’m amazed that they got it done, considering everything they’ve had to do,” a baseball official said most facetiously.