"The proposed trade between the Boston Red Sox and the Texas Rangers is dead," says Red Sox President Larry Lucchino, and although there are still rumblings of making something happen later on, so it appears to be. Had it gone though, the mega-trade and its aftershocks would have seen HOF-calibre players like Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez and Nomar Garciaparra, along with major figures like Magglio Ordonez and as many as two top-rated Dodgers pitching prospects change teams. It would have shifted the balance of power in the American League for at least a decade (especially the Eastern Division) and likely would have reduced George Steinbrenner to finding a strand of Babe Ruth's DNA in order to get the last word. And it would have had a serious, long-term impact on the competitive fortunes of your Toronto Blue Jays. But when a deal is this big, even a failed attempt is going to have ramifications.



Reports indicate that there were two factors behind the deal's collapse. The first, which is getting most of the press this morning, is that the Players' Association forbade Rodriguez from renegotiating his contract to the extent of losing $28M in total value, as A-Rod had apparently agreed to do in order to accommodate the Red Sox payroll. The union's argument is superficially attractive: employers cannot be allowed to lean on employees to reduce the value of their contracts, because the inherent power imbalance between master and servant invites exploitation. Even though Rodriguez would have undertaken the pay cut willingly, the precedent he would have set would have undermined all future club-player contract renegotiations going forward. Rodriguez, publicly at least, is agreeing with his union. He has little choice: his agent, Scott Boras, is one of the most important figures in the Players' Association -- it's generally understood that the union spends 90% of its efforts on the 10% of its members who make 90% of the total MLB payroll -- and the big-money alliances going on here reduce even someone as powerful as Rodriguez to the role of a bit player.

Personally, I think it's a little ironic that the union is thwarting A-Rod, the man whose $25M contract was the champagne toast of every single agent and player looking to hit his own jackpot down the road. Rodriguez, with the help of Boras' machinations and the oil-field largesse of a pre-Enron Tom Hicks, remade the landscape of player contracts when he signed on with the Rangers, blowing off less rich but still overwhelmingly good offers from successful, stable organizations like the Braves. Put it down to millennial fever if you like, but everyone on the labour side of baseball loved that deal, and they're not going to do anything to see it watered down in any way. A-Rod is learning a lot of lessons these days, and one of them is that he personally was never as popular with his agent, his union and many of his fellow players as was his market value. It's not you they love, A-Rod; it's your contract. Otherwise, why else would they be fighting to protect the latter and not the former?

I agree with the principle at stake here -- but I don't think it's being employed properly or sincerely by the union. The Association doesn't much care about owner-player power imbalances these days -- if it did, it would be making more of a stink about the waves of free agents and non-tenders all hitting the market at the same coincidental time this winter. One hundred non-tendered Cliff Polittes won't get Gene Orza's attention half as fast as the possibility of a 10% drop in the value of The Contract. Moreover, I have a fundamental problem with an organization forbidding one of its members to take actions that the member himself, with sound advice, perceives to be in his own best interests. A-Rod is willing to switch franchises -- from an overheated calliope of failure in Arlington to a storied and legendary (not to mention better-run) institution in Boston, at the cost of a 10% salary penalty. Frankly, that seems fair to me. If I hated my job and had the chance to get a much better job elsewhere, but at a lower salary, I'd very likely do it. A-Rod made his choice; he should be allowed to carry it out. Everyone in baseball knows that his is an exceptional case -- the first half-billion-dollar personal services contract in sports history can't be anything but -- and that no precedential value could ever be taken from it. The wave of non-tenders, to be swiftly followed by another wave of signings at greatly reduced salaries, will be far more of a precedent. But as we've discussed, the MLBPA isn't greatly concerned about that.

In any event, the union's intervention isn't the real problem here -- if anything, it was a Christmas gift for Tom Hicks and John Henry. Even had the union stood aside, the Red Sox and Rangers couldn't agree on the money. The Rangers insisted that the Red Sox, in addition to taking on A-Rod's longer and more expensive contract, also pick up millions of dollars of Manny Ramirez's salary as well. The Red Sox, perhaps understandably, told the Rangers to stuff it, that the Rangers were already getting an incredible break from tens of millions of dollars in future debt and that the Red Sox weren't going to finance one penny more of Hicks' new-found fiscal responsibility. The amounts at stake, comparatively, were piddling; the principle was not. And whether you like them or not, John Henry's principles are usually the going concern. Put it this way: would Steinbrenner allow $15M extra to stand between getting A-Rod and dumping Ramirez? But this is why everyone, including Larry Lucchino, is jumping on the golden PR opportunity provided to them by the Players' Association: instead of blaming each other and consequently spoiling Cognac Hour at future owners' meetings, the two sides can blame everyone's favourite unrepentant target, the union. The Sox and Rangers should send Gene Orza a Christmas basket.

So now what? As mentioned, the trade could still possibly happen, but I think we can safely assume it won't. This spells some trouble for the Rangers, who are now exposed to the baseball world as desperate to unload salary. If I was an enterprising GM, I'd be approaching John Hart about taking Chan Ho Park off his hands if Texas picked up all but, say $4M of his annual salary: Park was never as good as he appeared in LA, but he's not this bad either.

But the real trouble, of course, is at Fenway Park. Nomar Garciaparra is pissed, and it's hard to blame him. He's given the Red Sox tremendous production on the field and conducted himself graciously off it. If he hasn't been Mr. Personality with the press and the corporate sponsors, well, so what? Red Sox superstars have never been a lively, friendly bunch -- Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice never won any press-box awards. Nomar conducts himself as a professional, and more than one person has observed that he's one of the few standup personalities in an increasingly unpleasant Red Sox clubhouse. Now Garciaparra has to return to the team that was desperate to replace him with a younger, better model, and take infield practice with a Kevin Millar, who told ESPN that he wanted A-Rod, not Nomar, at shortstop next season (and Millar certainly is not the only one who feels that way, even if he was the only one foolish and boorish enough to say it). Garciaparra would have to be a saint not to take this personally; and even if he doesn't, he surely will have friends and allies in the clubhouse, the front office and press row who will.

Simply put, the Red Sox overreached; they got greedy. They had already had a hugely successful off-season, bringing in a co-ace in Curt Schilling and a brilliant reliever in Keith Foulke: those two moves alone probably guaranteed a divisional crown over the increasingly shaky Yanks and the not-yet-ready Blue Jays, and 100 wins would have been almost expected. But they flew too close to the sun: Theo Epstein, or someone higher up the food chain, decided he wanted everything, the whole enchilada. They were going to build the ultimate powerhouse team, bury the hated Yankees, finally win the Series. I think it's going to rebound on them, hard. Bad feelings, uncertainty, negativity and low morale mar productivity in every workplace -- and there is no workplace in baseball more susceptible to these influences than the one in Boston. Had the Red Sox left well enough alone, they would likely have been champs; but there is now a bad taste here, and it's not going to go away soon.

And what if the trade does in fact go though, if A-Rod and Magglio replace Nomar and Manny in next year's lineup? A wise person once said: you can only score so many runs, and you can only win so many games. The Red Sox would be a better team on paper and on the field next year, should these deals go through (though they'd sure be worse off in the ledgers). But would they be unbeatable -- over a full season, and especially in a short series? No. The Red Sox, tired of near-misses and truly desperate to finally make it to the top, have guaranteed nothing, and they've sown a lot of bad seeds. The day will come, I predict, when they will be sorry they ever tried to trade for Alex Rodriguez.