THE baseball world changed during the 2003-04 offseason. The Red Sox did not obtain Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees did.
The Players Association quashed a deal that would have sent A-Rod from Texas to Boston, refusing to let Rodriguez reduce the value of his contract to facilitate the move. Not long after that, Aaron Boone tore up his knee playing pickup basketball, the Yankees reached out to see if Rodriguez would switch from shortstop to third, and a trade was consummated.
Initially this was viewed as Babe Ruth II, the game’s great player slipping from the Red Sox to the Yankees. The Curse seemed like it would never go away. That was two Boston championships ago.
In recent weeks, as the gap between the Red Sox and Yankees has become more pronounced, there have been media attempts to enter the way-back machine and imagine how events might have transpired if Rodriguez had, indeed, ended up in Boston. Would he have become a hero by helping to end the Curse or — like in New York — would his insincerity, insecurity and ego have been a counterweight to his talent, sucking the life out of an entire organization?
But that might not even be the most interesting hypothetical involving Rodriguez. Remember, he was a free agent after the 2000 season and his first preference was to become a Met. Think about how history might have changed had Rodriguez come to New York immediately after the Subway Series to be Derek Jeter’s crosstown rival rather than fake-friend teammate.
“We had a lot of discussions about doing it,” said Jim Duquette, then a Mets’ assistant general manager. “We weren’t just kicking the tires.”
The quick shorthand for what occurred was: Then-GM Steve Phillips met Rodriguez’s agent, Scott Boras, immediately after the November GM Meetings. Boras outlined items Rodriguez would need beyond the largest contract in history. That list included an office at Shea Stadium to handle off-the-field issues, charter jet service for friends/family, and a guarantee that he would have the largest billboard presence in New York, particularly over Jeter.
Shortly thereafter, Phillips announced the Mets were withdrawing from negotiations, famously saying Boras/A-Rod were hunting an untenable “24-plus-one-man structure.” Rodriguez ultimately signed a 10-year, $252 million contract with the Rangers that made him the majors’ highest-paid player, but also the game’s biggest target. A domino effect was triggered that damaged Rodriguez’s reputation.
So what if Rodriguez had followed his heart, not his wallet. He grew up in Miami a huge Mets fan, watching his favorites such as Keith Hernandez and Doc Gooden on WWOR. Al Leiter said recently that it was near-accepted buzz around the Mets clubhouse during the 2000 season that Rodriguez wanted to come to the Mets. During the 2000 World Series, Rodriguez attended games at Shea Stadium, people close to him say, to scope out his imagined future home.
It is clear, though, that for Rodriguez to have ended up a Met, he needed a different agent. Boras had been directing A-Rod toward a historic contract since the slugger was in high school. Boras knew he had a unique opportunity; Rodriguez was a free agent at 25 and already hailed as one of the great shortstops ever. Boras could have asked for anything, and the problem is he did. Boras treated this as his negotiations, which meant pushing boundaries and creating antagonism between the client and organizations.
There is no doubt Rodriguez deserved the largest contract. But in doubling Kevin Garnett’s $126 million package for the largest deal in North American team sports history, Boras took A-Rod too far away from the herd. At the moment Rodriguez signed, the largest baseball package ever was Mike Hampton’s $121 million deal, and the largest per annum was the $15 million yearly for Kevin Brown. The gap between Rodriguez and everyone else fit his greed and ego. But it guaranteed a weight Rodriguez’s insecurity could not handle, a weight that Rodriguez now says led to his being a steroid user during his Texas years.
What if Rodriguez had an agent who better read what he could handle? What if Rodriguez, say, accepted an eight-year, $160 million deal to play for the team he grew up adoring. His reception around the game would have been much better. In fact, he might have been hailed for such a move.
Now this means leaving a ton of money on the table — which no one does — but in retrospect you can see how the money created a huge problem for him.
Would the Mets have gone to $160 million? It probably would have been their upper limits. But Nelson Doubleday was still part-owner and he believed in the big play.
“It was interesting because of the dynamic of Fred [Wilpon] and Nelson,” Phillips remembers. “They had different views on how to build a team and business plans. I know there is no way the Mets would go near $252 million.”
The 2001 Mets decided to augment their NL champs by enlisting Rey Ordonez for short rather than A-Rod, plus Kevin Appier and Todd Zeile. The entire Mets infield totaled 51 homers, one less than A-Rod (albeit in a hitter’s haven in Texas on steroids). The Mets stumbled to third with Tsuyoshi Shinjo serving 15 times as the cleanup hitter protecting Mike Piazza. They then had big money coming off the books and overreacted with Roberto Alomar, Jeromy Burnitz, Roger Cedeno and Mo Vaughn, among others.
Would the Mets have reached the playoffs again in 2001 with Rodriguez hitting behind Piazza? Would they have been better off extending financially for one star rather than the collection of players they eventually bought? Would Rodriguez have embraced being Jeter’s cross-Triborough rival rather than his uneasy teammate? Would he have found more love and acceptance and, thus, peace of mind playing for the largest contract ever as a Met rather than the monstrosity he signed in Texas? Would he have gotten along with Bobby Valentine (reached in Japan, Valentine essentially said, “Why not?”).
“Obviously, it is a crystal-ball discussion,” Leiter said. “We had Piazza. We could have created our dynamic duo. I think that would have forced people to talk about the National League New York team as much as the American League New York team. How fun would that have been?”