Despite Industry Backlash, There’s No Buyer’s Remorse

Make no mistake: The Dodgers’ pursuit and acquisition of Kevin Brown to an industry-infuriating, payroll-jolting contract that is the largest in baseball history was a case of damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Boy, was it.

There, in the same room Saturday in which General Manager Kevin Malone was announcing and defending the seven-year, $105-million contract that will still be paying the 33-year-old power pitcher $15 million a year when he is 40, Sandy Alderson, the former Oakland Athletic general manager who is now baseball’s executive vice president, stood against a wall and showered Malone and the Dodgers with damnation.

Others raised their voice in disapproval of a deal that smacked of the latest and most grievous excess in a winter of economic excess, but Alderson delivered the weight of the commissioner’s office as he dismissed comments by Malone--both from the podium and in the news release accompanying the announcement--that his club was sensitive to the industry’s concerns and the expanding payroll disparity.

Alderson pointed to the release and said Malone’s comments were a “direct affront and insult to the commissioner and baseball. To suggest in spite of this signing that they are concerned about the disparity and fiscal risks associated with the industry is [nonsense].

“As a former general manager I’m alarmed by this contract. As a member of the commissioner’s office I’m alarmed. And as a fan of the game I’m alarmed.”

Malone, of course, knew this was coming, knew there would be negative industry reaction, which is why he included his comments in the release.

The same Malone who often ripped the big markets when general manager of the small-market Montreal Expos insisted the Dodgers are sensitive to industry problems and cognizant of their responsibility but weren’t negotiating in a vacuum.

“The problems have to be addressed at the collective bargaining table and not by attacks on individual clubs,” he said. “I can’t change the limitations on the small market teams.

“We strongly considered the implications, and if we hadn’t done this, somebody else would have. There was money on the table. A couple clubs would have gone beyond what we paid. To criticize the Dodgers for using their resources in the best interest of our fans is unfair.”

It is not clear that there was money on the table or that a couple of clubs would have gone beyond what the Dodgers paid.

The San Diego Padres, trying to retain Brown, were left in the dust at six years and $60 million. The Colorado Rockies, Baltimore Orioles and St. Louis Cardinals were in the hunt, but had not gone beyond a sixth year, if they had gone that far.

The Dodgers iced the deal at seven. Their $15-million-a-year offer left many wondering what happened to $14 million a year, a plateau no player had crossed. Their $105-million deal left many wondering why Brown, a Macon, Ga., resident, couldn’t afford the 12 charter jet trips for his family from Georgia to California that the Dodgers are throwing in as a little icing.

Would Fox do this for Calista Flockhart?

“Sometimes money isn’t the only important thing,” Malone said. “Sometimes it comes down to the personal touch.”

And sometimes, of course, a club has to do what is in its own best interest, which is often the case in baseball, where widening disparities in payroll and revenue are threatening competitive balance and generating hints of another Armagedon with the players’ union when the current labor agreement expires after the 2001 season.

For the Dodgers, a runner-up in the Randy Johnson sweepstakes as they tried to replace Ramon Martinez as the rotation ace and counter the marquee signing of Mo Vaughn by dreaded Disney down the street, Brown represented a dominant, durable and tenacious pitcher whose intensity elevates teammates and who led the Padres to a National League pennant.

“The market was established by our competition,” Malone said, suggesting that if the Dodgers were going to fill their need, if they were going to bring what he described as “another warrior” to the clubhouse to join new batterymate Todd Hundley, they had to pay the price.

He called Brown a priority in the process of reestablishing a winning tradition and buying time to rebuild the farm system.

Larry Lucchino, president of Brown’s former San Diego team, saw it another way. He said the contract represented an apocalypse and confirmed the fears of many in the industry when Rupert Murdoch was awaiting approval as the Dodger owner.

The sniping Alderson touched on this when asked if he could really be surprised that the Dodgers now have a record payroll of $85 million, given Murdoch’s resources and the concerns when he took over.

“I’m not surprised but I am disappointed,” he said. “I think it says more about somebody’s prime-time schedule than anything else.”

Of course. Murdoch’s $311-million purchase of the Dodgers was as much about programming and marketing as anything else.

A championship team would fill some cable time slots very nicely.

At $85 million, the Dodgers will be expected to win and should win--their division, at least, which their confident new manager acknowledged.

“I have to say we’re the favorites,” Davey Johnson said in discussing the addition of Brown, “but then I always expect to win. I put that pressure on myself. I don’t care if the payroll is $85 million or $25 million, like it was in Cincinnati and my early years in New York.”

The $105 million that the Dodgers have guaranteed Brown is more than the cumulative payrolls of Minnesota, Cincinnati, Florida, Oakland, Pittsburgh and Montreal in 1998.

Atlanta General Manager John Schuerholz was one of the few at the winter baseball meetings not floored by the deal, having become jaded by the series of signings that have seen six players this winter either tie or better the previous record for average annual value with a seventh, Roger Clemens, still to come and obviously salivating over Brown’s new market standard.

“One thing is certain,” Schuerholz said. “Kevin Brown can certainly afford that new $4-million mansion he’s building in Macon, Georgia.

“Think about it. A $4-million mansion in Macon, Georgia. Maybe he’s actually building Macon.”

Urban renewal? This was more about Dodger renewal. In today’s market, can they really be blamed?