Angels ’87 : Free-Agency Call Throws Boone a Curve

Bob Boone, as you know, is out of work. He’s also out of touch, out of time, out of luck, out of sight and out of mind. He’s out of options. He’s out of uniform. He’s even out of the Angels’ media guide.

About the only thing Boone is not out of is shape.

For the first time in 20 baseball years, opening day will come and go without Boone, who is holding squatter’s rights these days at some high school in Placentia rather than by his rightful place and plate in Anaheim Stadium.

If Boone knew then what he knows now about baseball and economics, life would be different. But he never professed the ability to read tea leaves or the minds of baseball’s owners.

Boone is a catcher, and a good one. Good enough, even at age 39, to warrant employment somewhere. But his phone is silent. And that’s the shame of it.

Boone, as you know, tested the free-agent waters last January and found them chilling. He remains one frostbitten free agent.

Though he is perhaps baseball’s best defensive catcher, Boone has not received a serious offer from another club. Not a one.

So he sits, and waits, and squats, and wonders.

“I fully believed I would be playing some place else for less money,” he said. “Zero wasn’t exactly the number I had in mind.”

As he discovered, not without complete surprise, the free-agent market is closed for business. If teams are not willing to sign the likes of free-agent stars Tim Raines and Bob Horner, they aren’t about to sign a 39-year-old catcher.

A guy can take a hint, so that’s why Boone expected to be packaged at a discount price. But no one is even running for blue-light specials these days.

“From that standpoint I guessed entirely wrong,” Boone said, “because the offers have been basically zero.”

Boone says he’s not bitter, only bewildered.

It appears now that his only recourse is to return to the Angels, though he can’t negotiate with his former team until May 1. That’s the price you pay for missing signing deadlines.

If it gets down to that, Boone says he’ll return with his head up. He likens his venture into free agency to a night in a Las Vegas casino. In other words, Boone walked in, sat down, played his hand against the dealer (the Angels) and lost.

He says there’s no shame in it.

“If a guy turns over three aces and you’ve got two pair, you throw your hand in,” Boone said. “You don’t go over the table and beat the crap out of the guy. That’s just the way it is. If I go back, shoot, it will be easy. It’s like, yeah, I made the wrong perceptions and you kicked my butt. Here I am. I don’t hold grudges. Business is business.”

If Boone could have foreseen the future, he might have changed it. If he would have known that not a single team would be interested in his services, he would likely be an Angel today.

“I have never claimed to have done the smart thing,” Boone said. “For myself, though, I know I did the right thing. Smart and right don’t necessarily give you the same thing.”

The Angels, as it turned out, had the market played right. They let Boone go, figuring that they could probably get him back on May 1, if they so chose.

On Wall Street, that’s good business. Of course maybe, as Boone suggested, the Angels are privy to some inside trading tips.

“Somebody obviously knew more about the rules than I did,” said Boone, who would offer no more on the word (pssst, it’s collusion) everyone is talking around these days.

Boone never figured it would come to this in the first place. He should have re-signed with the Angels. He wanted to re-sign.

“I figured Bob Boone was the easiest sign they ever had,” he said.

He hit only .222 last season, but Boone did wonders with the pitching staff that led the Angels to the American League West title. He seemed the one free agent the team really needed back.

Boone, in what may be the sincerest show of flattery, still receives phone calls from his pitchers.

There was and remains with his staff a bond that Boone admits is “tremendous.”

Yet, Boone said the Angels played a game with him that he didn’t like. They basically waited until five minutes before the Jan. 8 signing deadline to offer him a new contract.

Boone said it was never a matter of money with him. He simply didn’t like being backed into a corner, with no time to discuss the contract or his future.

Even at that, the Angels’ offer of $883,000 was hardly chicken feed.

“I will never say what I turned down was not a lot of money,” Boone said. “In fact, it was a tremendous amount of money. It just wasn’t a money issue to me. I can’t explain that to anyone. It’s not even worth trying. There were a lot of reasons for the breakdown, and I thought it was totally unnecessary and ridiculous.”

Did he leave out silly?

Mike Port, the Angels’ general manager, elected not to return phone calls to state his side and perhaps throw in a few fancy words of his own.

Anyway, with time running out before the deadline, Boone said he had no time even to dispute that the Angels were offering a raise.

It turned out that parties involved were looking at the same contract differently.

Boone saw the $883,000 offer as a severe pay cut from his three-year contract that averaged $917,000 a season with bonuses.

The Angels saw it as a significant raise from his 1986 base salary of $700,000.

It all leads us to wonder, “Is a glass half-empty or half-full?” With the clock ticking, a frazzled Boone asked for another $10,000 as a gesture of good faith. Boone says now that he knew the move would kill the deal.

Whatever frustrations remain, Bob Boone works them out in the form of sweat. Sure, there are people to blame and places to be.

“But that’s for me and nobody else,” he said. “It does no good to publicize my feelings at all.”

Instead, Boone prepares his body for baseball. Let’s just say you wouldn’t want to follow him through his daily regimen.

While you’re asking Boone if he’s in shape, he’s doing this squat exercise against a fence, springing from the ground into the air like some primate.

He’s in shape. Trust me.

For Boone, it’s four hours of training each day at El Dorado High School, where he also derives great satisfaction from assisting the school’s baseball team, of which his son, Bret, is a member.

For that opportunity, spring training is not missed.

“It’s allowed me time to watch my kid play,” Boone said. “I missed him a lot growing up. It’s been neat. I’ve really enjoyed it.”

But every game Boone misses he falls further behind the pack.

“That’s the frustrating part,” he said. “I know I need games, but I don’t know what that number is. But I need a certain amount to be ready for the season.”

Boone tunes in the Angels daily on his radio (“It’s a part of my life.”)

With May 1 approaching, Boone, on his own, will continue to lift, sweat, grunt, run and throw until someone rings him up on the phone. Boone is a catcher for hire.

He tries to convince himself that someone out there wants him. But every flip of the calendar tells him differently. And when April turns to May, Bob Boone will likely return home to Anaheim Stadium, humbled by the experience but pleased when faced with the alternative.

“I have no qualms about going back if it comes to that,” Boone said. “I have an advantage over a lot of people. I have a very small amount of ego. In baseball there is a caste system. The great players get pampered with. Then you get down to the utility players. We call them turds. I know I’m a turd. When you take batting practice, the balls they use are the older ones, they don’t go as far. I never thought of myself as more than a turd, a guy who doesn’t require or deserve special privileges.”

The Angels, glue in hand, ready themselves for the ceremonial pasting of Boone’s biography page back in the media guide. Hey, it’ll be like he never left.

BOB BOONE’S MAJOR LEAGUE CAREER STATISTICS

Year Team Ave. G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB 1972 Philadelphia .275 16 51 4 14 1 0 1 4 5 1973 Philadelphia .261 145 521 42 136 20 2 10 61 41 1974 Philadelphia .242 146 488 41 118 24 3 3 52 35 1975 Philadelphia .246 97 289 28 71 14 2 2 20 32 1976 Philadelphia .271 121 361 40 98 18 2 4 54 45 1977 Philadelphia .284 132 440 55 125 26 4 11 66 42 1978 Philadelphia .283 132 435 48 123 18 4 12 62 46 1979 Philadelphia .286 119 398 38 114 21 3 9 58 49 1980 Philadelphia .229 141 480 34 110 23 1 9 55 48 1981 Philadelphia .211 76 227 19 48 7 0 4 24 22 1982 California .256 143 472 42 121 17 0 7 58 39 1983 California .256 142 468 46 120 18 0 9 52 24 1984 California .202 139 450 33 91 16 1 3 32 25 1985 California .248 150 460 37 114 17 0 5 55 37 1986 California .222 144 442 48 98 12 2 7 49 43 Total 15 Years .251 1843 5982 555 1501 252 24 96 702 533

Year SO SB 1972 7 1 1973 36 3 1974 29 3 1975 14 1 1976 44 2 1977 54 5 1978 37 2 1979 33 1 1980 41 3 1981 16 2 1982 34 0 1983 42 4 1984 45 3 1985 35 1 1986 30 1 Total 497 32