Scott Boras and the Boston Red Sox can’t seem to be involved in the same transaction without raising suspicion. Two years ago it was J.D. Drew. Now it’s Manny Ramirez.
Did the Red Sox tamper with Drew to induce him to opt out of his contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers? Though they never filed a complaint with the commissioner’s office, Dodgers officials privately believed that the Red Sox did. Red Sox officials and Boras said they did not.
Did Boras, also Ramirez’s agent, call Theo Epstein, the Red Sox general manager, after he traded Ramirez to the Dodgers and say Ramirez would stay in Boston and behave himself if Epstein got rid of the two option years in the Ramirez contract?
Boras and the Red Sox denied the report, which appeared in the Boston Globe. However, the commissioner’s office was bothered enough to look into the alleged phone call. That was more than the commissioner’s office did in the Drew case.
What the brief investigation found was denials all around and confirmation from the Players Association that Ramirez wanted to go to Los Angeles before and after the trade was made.
The Drew suspicions were more plausible than a post-trade Boras phone call about Ramirez. Drew walked away from a guaranteed $33 million; why would he risk that sum unless he knew there was more money out there, which there was — $70 million from the Red Sox.
In the Ramirez case, though, if Boras were going to guarantee Manny’s good behavior in return for free agency at the end of this season, why wouldn’t he have made that offer before the trade, not after?
Furthermore, if the trade had already been made, how could the Red Sox have undone it? The only way they might have had was for Ramirez to exercise his trade-veto rights. But at least 24 hours earlier Ramirez had signed a waiver of those rights, which is called for under labor rules governing players who have at least 10 years in the majors and the last 5 with the same club.
A baseball official confirmed that Ramirez had signed the waiver in a timely manner.
Boras might be and do a lot of things that raise questions, but even he knows he can’t undo a trade once it is made. He also knows not to violate the law. Offering to have Ramirez behave and play hard if the option years were dropped seems to come awful close to extortion: If you don’t drop the options, he won’t play hard.
The report of the phone call simply doesn’t make sense.
Rickey Being Rickey
The Red Sox finally tired of Manny being Manny, but who can ever get tired of Rickey being Rickey?
On the other hand, when he played, Rickey Henderson often gave the team he was playing for at that particular moment plenty to grow tired of.
Henderson is ostensibly retired, though you could never be surprised if his career broke out again. Henderson’s retirement status is important because his eligibility for the Hall of Fame depends on it.
Because he concluded his 25-year major league career in 2003, this is his fifth season of the five-year waiting period for Hall eligibility. In his desire to extend his major league career, Henderson played a couple of more seasons in an independent minor league, confusing the issue in his mind.
“They say I’m eligible this year,” Henderson said. “You know me. I have no clue when I’m eligible. They told me I retired. I still thought I hadn’t retired. I don’t know what to do. I’m up in the air. Baseball’s strange sometimes to me. They do what they want to do.”
Henderson should probably begin working on his induction speech – and won’t that be something to hear – because he figures to be elected easily next year as a first-ballot Hall of Famer. These, according to the Elias Book of Baseball Records, are some of his credentials:
- Most runs scored lifetime 2,295.
- Most home runs leadoff batter, first inning, lifetime 81.
- Most stolen bases lifetime 1,406.
- Most stolen bases in a season 130 in 1982.
Does he consider himself a first-ballot Hall of Fame?
“In my heart, you know, yes,” Henderson said, “but it’s not my decision. In my family’s heart and a whole lot of fans they would say yes. I feel I went out there and played the game right. I played the game well. I accomplished a lot of things, a lot of what the Hall of Fame ballplayers have done, so I feel I deserve it. But we’ll see what happens.”
After talking about the Hall and himself for a few minutes, Henderson was still uncertain about his status.
“I played for the Dodgers in 93 in the major leagues,” he said, referring to his last major league season. “Then I played in an independent league a couple of years until 95 or somewhere around there. They say that doesn’t count, but I thought everything counts when you’re trying to get back into the game. If I come out my first year and they say you’re going into the Hall of Fame, I’ll be happy to be there.”
“They’ll choose my time to go in the Hall of Fame,” he added, “so I’m happy whatever they choose as long as I’m in there with some of the great ballplayers.”
Henderson who will be 50 on Christmas Day never wanted to quit playing because he enjoyed playing so much.
“I still love the game of baseball,” Rickey said. “If you saw Rickey Henderson play, you know deep inside in his heart he really loved the game. He put everything into playing the game and he had fun playing the game. I had a great time out there playing the game.”
The Alexander Clone
Based on early returns, Milwaukee’s acquisition of CC Sabathia last month will go down as one of the all-time great mid-season trades. Sabathia’s first seven starts for the Brewers produced a 7-0 record for the team and a 6-0 record with a 1.58 earned rum average for the pitcher.
The trade is reminiscent of the 1987 deal that brought the Detroit Tigers Doyle Alexander in mid-August. Alexander reeled off a 9-0 record and a 1.53 earned run average in 11 starts, all of which the Tigers won. When the Tigers made the trade, they were in second place a game and a half behind Toronto, and Alexander’s performance propelled them to the division title.
The Brewers would be ecstatic if they could duplicate the Tigers’ performance, but for now general manager Doug Melvin is delighted with Sabathia’s performance.
“He has a chance to pass Alexander,” Melvin said, referring to Alexander’s wins. “It’s almost becoming too easy. His complete games have been the thing.”
In his most recent start, Sabathia pitched his fourth complete game for the Brewers and did it in 103 pitches. Most pitchers these days leave games in the fifth or sixth inning having thrown 100 pitches.
The Indians, meanwhile, will have to be patient for their end of the trade to resemble what the Atlanta Braves got in trading Alexander to the Tigers. Among he four players (one to be named) who went to the Indians were two pitchers, Zach Jackson and Rob Bryson. Will either one turn out to be another John Smoltz?
The Myth of Mr. May (Part II)
The New York Post has its Page 6. The New York Times has page 4. They have nothing in common.
The Post’s Page 6 is filled with gossipy items. The Times’ page 4 is filled with corrections. This is one correction you will not see on page 4.
You might have read here about the Times’ fictional account of George Steinbrenner’s creation of Dave Winfield as Mr. May. The Times, in a column by Harvey Araton, suggested that the Yankees owner called Winfield Mr. May because of his poor performance in the 1981 World Series.
According to the Times’ erroneous account, Steinbrenner even said he got rid of Mr. October, Reggie Jackson, although Jackson played in the 81 World Series with Winfield.
Steinbrenner, however, created Mr. May in 1985 as a result of Winfield’s poor performance in a critical September series with the Toronto Blue Jays. 
In the interest of clearing up the misperception for Times readers and posterity, I sent an e-mail to the corrections editor in the Times sports department. However, the editor, Mike Abrams, denied that an error had been made and that a correction was called for.
“It appears clear,” Abrams wrote in an e-mail, “ that Harvey was framing the context of George Steinbrenner’s ‘Mr. May’ comment to Winfield’s performance in the 1981 World Series. The column did not, however, actually say that Steinbrenner made the comment during the Series.”
Abrams concluded, “I see no reason to publish a correction in this instance, because there was no specific mistake.”
It is the right of the Times, of course, to ignore an error and leave its readers with a misimpression of what actually occurred. But that’s not the way the Times used to do things. To acknowledge that the column framed the comment in the context of the 1981 World Series but to say that wasn’t a mistake is bewildering.
Maybe the correction could wind up on Page 6.