But that’s not the way it happened, according to general manager Alex Anthopoulos, who nevertheless set out to improve the team. Take the mammoth (12-player) Marlins’ trade, for example.
“It just worked out that way,” Anthopoulos said. “It kind of developed. The idea was to improve the team.”
When Bowie Kuhn was the commissioner in the 1970s, he didn’t buy Charlie Finley’s word. He thought it was malarkey.
Finley, owner of the Oakland Athletics, sold Vida Blue to the Yankee for $1.5 million and Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox for $1 million each. It was the first year of free agency, and Finley knew he would lose the players at the end of the season.
Rather than have that happen, Finley later explained in his pursuit of a lawsuit against Kuhn, who blocked the deals, he figured he would sell the players for a lot of money and use the proceeds to obtain new players.
I don’t know if the Classic has caught on, but I like it. Long before the WBC as created in 2006, I liked the idea of major leaguers playing for their native countries in a world-wide tournament and finding out who had the best team.
The WBC hasn’t achieved the status of soccer’s World Cup, but maybe someday it will be there. For that to happen, baseball has to …
