Padres Lock Up Carter Trade for $9.2 Million

The stench of cigar smoke hung in the air. Opened bags of potato chips and pretzels were strewn about the coffee table. Room service receipts were everywhere.

“Look at this place,” said Jack McKeon, Padre vice president/baseball operations. “I haven’t left this room in two days. I think some people are wondering if I’m still alive.”

Well, after about 44 hours of negotiations that began Sunday night, McKeon finally emerged from room 7467, strolled down to the convention-level floor, and announced what he believes just might be the best trade he ever engineered:

Center fielder Joe Carter--signing a three-year, $9.2 million contract Wednesday that will make him the highest-paid position player in baseball--is coming to the Padres. Catcher Sandy Alomar Jr., left fielder Chris James and minor-league third baseman Carlos Baerga are going to the Cleveland Indians.

“God only knows how many trades I’ve pulled off,” McKeon said, pausing to puff on his cigar, “but this one, this one might have me the most excited I’ve ever been about a trade I’ve made.”

Said Padre outfielder Tony Gwynn: “Trader Jack has done it again. He was the marquee name of the whole winter meetings. But hey, if you think Jack’s excited, you should see me. I’m going crazy. We got a super player this city’s just going to fall in love with. What a class act.

“Of course, I’m probably biased. He’s a great friend, and now I’ll have a guy I can hang out with on the road.

“And as great a guy as he is off the field, you should see him on it. He’s one of the very best in the business.”

Carter, 29, has averaged 30 homers and 108 RBIs the past four seasons. Only three American League players have driven in more runs the past four seasons, and the last time he hit fewer than 25 homers in a season was back in 1985.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” Carter, 29, said. “It’s a great opportunity for me to play for a contender, and a chance to play in a great ballpark and a great town and maybe even get a chance to play in a World Series.”

Sure, he’ll now be living almost halfway across the United States from his hometown of Kansas City, but when you’ve played for a team that has finished higher than fourth just once since 1968, you can understand Carter’s elation.

“Believe me, that will be a nice feeling,” Carter said.

The Padres and Indians actually consummated their trade late Monday night, but it was contingent upon Carter agreeing to sign past the 1990 season.

Jim Turner, Carter’s agent, was telephoned at 11 p.m. Monday by Indians President Hank Peters and asked if Carter was willing to sign a multi-year contract if he was traded to the Padres.

Turner immediately telephoned Carter and excitedly informed him of the news.

Carter’s reaction?

“I’ll be honest with you,” Turner said, “Joe and his wife were not in agreement at first. He heard great things about the city and the organization, but Kansas City is a long ways from San Diego, and he was going to have to leave his family at home during school.

“You’ve got to remember, Joe is a family man. That’s the most important thing to him, not baseball.

“I really wasn’t sure which way Joe would go.”

But at 12:30 Tuesday afternoon, Carter agreed that he would sign a three-year contract with the Padres. Some 26 hours later, the trade was official.

“There was so much cigar smoke,” Turner said, “I had to sign the contract just so I could get out of that room for a breath of fresh air.”

Really, the only hangup in the entire negotiating process was that McKeon and Turner disagreed on a no-trade provision. Turner wanted a no-trade clause for the contract’s entirety; McKeon refused.

The compromise: Carter can be traded, but not to the New York Yankees, New York Mets, Montreal Expos or Detroit Tigers.

Said McKeon: “To tell you the truth, I’d like to hang onto this guy for the next 10 years.”

Peters apologized to Indians’ fans on Wednesday for trading Carter, but really, he had no choice. Carter, eligible for free agency at the end of the 1990 season, informed Peters this season that he would test the market if the Indians would not trade him.

And with the way the free-agent market has exploded this past couple of weeks, the Indians were not about to gamble that he’d be willing to return in 1991.

So now he’s a Padre, with the richest contract in all of the land by any position player, with pitcher Mark Langston of the Angels being the only exception.

“That’s definitely an honor, and I can thank a lot of people for that,” Carter said, “but someone is going to come along and do even better. They’ve been broken every week. Every day this week it seems like to gets higher and higher.”

Really, Carter couldn’t be any happier, he said, if it wasn’t for these real-estate prices he keeps hearing about in San Diego.

“I knew the cost of housing in San Diego was expensive, but nothing like that,” Carter said.

This is a guy who paid $250,000 for his 6,000-square foot house in Leawood, Kansas, and when he asked Gwynn just what he might be able to get for $250,000 in San Diego, he couldn’t believe the answer.

“I could have lied to him,” Gwynn said, “but I had to tell him the truth. I told him maybe he could get a condo.”

Said Turner: “Hey, with the contract he just got, he should be able to get a house, well, rent one at least.”

The trade, of course, would not have been possible, the Indians say, without Alomar. He’s the man they wanted all along, and asked for him instead of starting catcher Benito Santiago.

And while James might have brooded over the trade Wednesday, hoping that this was all a bad dream, Alomar was ecstatic about his future, even if it is in Cleveland.

“This is something I’ve waited for all of my life,” said Alomar, the two-time Sporting News’ Minor League Player of the Year. “People talk about Cleveland, and make fun of it, but I think it’s going to be great. I mean, they’ve got some good pitchers. They’ve got guys like Greg Swindell, Buddy Black . . . hmm, who else?”

Well, don’t forget Tom Candiotti.

“They’ve got Candiotti?” he said. “Oh my God.”

Candiotti just happens to be a knuckleball pitcher, who keeps catchers scrambling behind the plate.

But while Alomar was elated, James went through stages of anger, depression and anxiety.

“Man, I can’t believe they’d get rid of me, I can’t believe any of this,” James said. “I don’t want to leave San Diego. I love San Diego.

“I think the biggest thing that hurts is that I really feel San Diego has a chance to win it all this year, and now, I’m not going to be a part of it.”

Perhaps, however, those who took the trade news the hardest were the Kansas City Royals. Carter, whose wife is from Kansas City, told everyone who’d listen that playing for the Royals wass his first choice.

But when the Royals refused to add third baseman Kevin Seitzer or outfielder Jim Eisenreich to go along with outfielder Danny Tartabull, the Indians turned to the Padres.

“I know they’re just dying right now,” said Bobby Brett, the brother of Royal first baseman George Brett. “George kept telling everyone that he’d have Carter batting behind him next year. Well, I guess the only way that’s going to happen now is if George gets traded to San Diego.”

Even after the Padres acquired the rights to Carter, sources said, Royals General Manager John Schuerholz telephoned McKeon and offered to trade Tartabull for Carter.

McKeon’s response?

“Jack told him that if he wanted Tartabull,” the source said, “he would have traded for him in the first place.”

End of conversation.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of the whole ordeal was that Padre resident Dick Freeman and Tony Siegle, Padre vice president/player personnel, had absolutely no role in the Carter trade.

Siegle, stripped of his authority Sunday when Padre owner Joan Kroc put McKeon back in charge of the baseball operations, received permission from the Padres to leave the winter meetings Tuesday and return home. He now awaits the inevitable, and is expected to be fired.

Freeman’s future with the organization also remains in doubt. Although still is involved in Padre business affairs, he was not informed of the Padres’ trade with Carter until told by a reporter, and was on a flight home at the time of the official announcement.