Reds Close Door on Talks for Griffey

Jim Bowden, the Cincinnati Reds’ general manager who said he wasn’t coming to Anaheim to see Goofy but to get Griffey, conceded Saturday he had a “much better chance” of going home with the former.

Bowden held one last negotiating session with Seattle Mariner General Manager Pat Gillick, refused again to include second baseman Pokey Reese in any package of players he would trade for center fielder Ken Griffey Jr., and then announced he was withdrawing from the five-week pursuit, leaving the Mariners with no known suitors for one of baseball’s most renowned talents.

“It’s a waste of time to continue,” Bowden said, adding that his talks with Gillick haven’t “moved a centimeter, let alone an inch” and that this was no ploy, there is zero chance the discussions will resume.

Bowden didn’t specifically say that Reese--who the Mariners viewed as a leadoff man and possible shortstop if Alex Rodriguez is traded or leaves as a free agent after the 2000 season--was the stumbling block, but that he wasn’t going to break up a young team that won 96 games, even though Griffey “is my personal favorite player” and would have been returning to his hometown.

“We did not want to make a Ricky Williams or Herschel Walker kind of trade,” Bowden said. “Hopefully, next year there will be increased revenue sharing and our dollars will continue to go up and we’ll be able to afford a player like this at the end of the year without having to give up any players [to get him]. We were better waiting to see if he does become a free agent.”

Bowden made his comments in a news conference at the winter baseball meetings in Anaheim. Gillick termed it “unprofessional” since Bowden had announced Friday that he would hold the news conference after he first met with Gillick--as if to say Bowden knew nothing would develop in the meeting.

“If we schedule a meeting and you announce the day before that you’re going to have a press conference, then that’s unprofessional,” Gillick said, adding that he understood Bowden’s frustration at failing to acquire “one of the best players in the game” but didn’t understand “how they could let this one player [Reese] hold up the deal.”

Bowden, however, suggested it was Gillick who erred.

“There was a certain player that was key for them and we were not going to trade that player,” he said. “We were hopeful here they would move off that position a little, but they didn’t. We made significant offers. If I were on Pat’s side, and I had a player that was going to be a free agent at the end of 2000, I would have made the deal.”

In rejecting an eight-year, $140-million offer from the Mariners, Griffey has asked to be traded to a team that plays or trains closer to his home in Orlando, Fla.

He refused to let interested teams discuss a contract with him before consummating a trade, but Bowden said neither the prospect of a $20-million-a-year contract extension nor the inability to discuss that extension before he traded a package of players affected his interest or the trade negotiations.

Otherwise, he said, he would not have spent five hours a day on it for more than three months.

“Three months?” Gillick said. “I’ve only [had the job] for six weeks. Who’s he been talking to?”

The Reds--who at one point, Bowden said, offered five players and, at several others four--were believed willing to give up relief pitcher Scott Williamson, the National League’s rookie of the year, center fielder Mike Cameron, infield prospect Travis Dawkins, outfielder-first baseman Dmitri Young and either Brett Tomko or Denny Neagle.

The Mariners, who faced a similar and distracting scenario with Randy Johnson in 1998, are in the tenuous position of getting only draft choices as compensation if Griffey and Rodriguez are not traded and leave as free agents after the 2000 season. Agent Scott Boras has said that Rodriguez would prefer to spend that entire season with the Mariners, is determined to test the free-agent market next winter and will not sign with any team that might trade for him, making it unlikely an interested team will give up a package of players with no assurance of retaining Rodriguez at the end of the season.

That same complexity has compounded Seattle’s attempt to trade Griffey, who, as a player with 10 years in the majors and five with the same team, has veto rights over any deal.

While both of the Mariner stars likely would draw widespread interest as free agents, the current trade prospects appear dim.

Gillick has made no attempt to move Rodriguez because of Griffey’s request to be traded, but that position could change now that the Reds have withdrawn from the Griffey pursuit, leaving . . . well, Gillick said he talked to three teams after the Reds withdrawal but identified only the New York Mets, who may be as adamant about retaining second baseman Edgardo Alfonzo as the Reds were about Reese.

Gillick, however, said he was determined to get true value for Griffey and was surprised that the Reds shut the door.

“I don’t think I’ve ever shut the door on anything,” he said. “Things can change.”

The Reds did make a deal Saturday, acquiring outfielder Kimera Bartee from the Detroit Tigers for a player to be named or cash.

Bowden, at least, will be going home with something more than Goofy.