In Dallas, the Game Plan Changed in a Heartbeat

I would like to be able to say that a funny thing happened to me while covering the winter meetings in Dallas last week--except that I wasn’t laughing.

I mean, one minute I’m breezing through another baseball season, almost forgetting that four years ago I had a quintuple bypass.

The next, I’m setting up my laptop at the Wyndham Anatole Hotel in Dallas and suddenly experiencing chest and arm discomfort that lands me in the ER at the nearby St. Paul Medical Center.

What a contrast. There I am nervously eyeing the heart monitor to which I’m attached, and there are the owners, again demonstrating the need for a brain scan as they distribute millions in holiday cheer to grateful--or is that greedy?--players.

In my case, Fullerton cardiologist Dan Landa concluded after my return, the heart is that of a 30-year-old, but an artery or two have qualified for Social Security. The condition will be treated medicinally.

The prescription for baseball remains even more complex. Here is a review of some recent developments and comments I was unable to deliver while sampling room service at St. Paul:

RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE?

The casting of agent Scott Boras as Dr. Death and the sole ruination of baseball is nonsense. Boras may find loopholes where there seemingly are none, may insist there is competition for his clients when there is none, may be too aggressive and demanding to suit many, but his list of quality clients speaks for his preparation and success. And it is still to be proven that he carries a concealed weapon.

There is no evidence, for example, that Boras put a gun to the head of Texas Ranger owner ger General Manager Kevin Malone when each basically bid against himself during the final hours of the Rangers’ $252-million signing of Alex Rodriguez or the Dodgers’ $105-million signing of Kevin Brown.

“There is no tougher negotiator, but any deal we have ever made with Scott Boras is the result of having wanted to do it, having planned on doing it,” New York Yankee General Manager Brian Cashman said. “I mean, no agent--Scott Boras or otherwise--is going to keep us at the table if we don’t want to be there.”

A FOX OF MANY COLORS

Rupert Murdoch did not allow the Dodgers to bid on Rodriguez, but he will be paying the shortstop’s salary in Texas. At a time when Hicks was thinking of starting his own cable channel to televise his Rangers and Dallas Stars, he opted instead for a 15-year deal with Fox Sports Southwest that has been reported ranging anywhere from $300 million to

$550 million, among baseball’s top three local deals. (This before the Rangers receive their slice of the national pie, which includes Murdoch’s $2.5-billion commitment to show all postseason games for the next six years.)

Call the Rodriguez contract outrageous and obscene if you want, but Hicks is no fool. He estimates that the Rangers’ $81-million payroll in 2001 will represent a reasonable 55% of revenue, and insists revenue, given the A-Rod impact, will escalate faster than the Rodriguez contract through increased ticket sales, improved marketing and promotions, and accelerated development around The Ballpark in Arlington.

The concept of spending money to make money is likely foreign to many of the organizations that annually sit idle in October, among them the one that plays in Anaheim and apparently adheres to a delusional belief that a $2-million investment in journeyman Pat Rapp provides the needed leadership for a young rotation.

SO IT WASN’T AMAZING GRACE

Seattle Mariner Chairman Howard Lincoln calls A-Rod’s departure a case of amazing greed. Perhaps, but give Rodriguez credit for calling it what it was: an economic and career decision. There was none of that all-about-family-and-location business that Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle came up with while insisting that money had nothing to do with their $173-million signings with the Colorado Rockies.

In following the money, Rodriguez’s dislike for the Safeco Field dimensions played into it, but he will certainly miss the career-sustaining temperatures of Seattle during the strength-sapping summers in Texas. He also may go stir crazy during spring training in isolated Port Charlotte, Fla.--no disrespect to the Chinese buffet there.

Of course, he can pretty much afford to build his own golf course, restaurant and theater for entertainment, but how is A-Rod to be blamed for taking what was offered? In fact, when he is done collecting all of the bonuses and awards over the 10 years, that $252 million will probably be closer to

$275 million or more. A series of escalating clauses guarantees that he remains the highest paid player, whether he merits it or not, and isn’t that the most disturbing aspect of the whole package?

The bible may not have had A-Rod in mind, but as noted in Proverbs: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”

THE ADVICE LINE

Look, the Chicago White Sox recently hired former agent Dennis Gilbert as an advisor to owner Jerry Reinsdorf, so why don’t the Dodgers make it official and hire Boras, who has been one of chairman Bob Daly’s primary consultants during his baseball indoctrination?

Cynics, of course, might regard that as something of a conflict, considering Boras also represents six members of the projected 25-man roster, including four-fifths of the likely rotation.

In a surprise, Boras failed to lure Daly into the Rodriguez bidding, but he now brings Chan Ho Park to the negotiating table in what looms as a daunting and expensive assignment for the Dodgers, considering that Boras--in a deal as slick as the Rodriguez signing--talked the Dodgers into meeting Darren Dreifort’s $55-million demand despite his 39-45 record.

Park, a year younger at 27, is coming off his best season and has a 65-43 record with a 3.88 earned-run average, which in the current pitching market--and under the pressure of his free-agent eligibility after the 2001 season--may force the Dodgers to consider almost doubling what they gave Dreifort.

The National League West has suddenly become a pitchers’ division, arguably baseball’s deepest.

Hampton and Neagle join Pedro Astacio in Colorado. Andy Ashby joins Brown, Park and Dreifort in Los Angeles. Arizona has Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling, Todd Stottlemyre and Brian Anderson. Division champion San Francisco has a five-deep rotation featuring Shawn Estes, Livan Hernandez and Russ Ortiz.

Under a revamped schedule in which every team will play about 25 more games in its own division, the head-to-head pitching is more critical than ever.

For the Dodgers, basically betting

$55 million on the come, Dreifort is pivotal.

They need him to sustain his 8-2, 3.14 form of the second half of last season.

Double D doesn’t have to be Big D, the Hall of Fame right-hander to whom his potential has often been compared, but the contract suggests that it’s time he get close.

REMEMBERING WAYNE GARLAND

The Dallas spending splurge will obviously send the salary scale spiraling and will affect negotiations for the 2001 free-agent class, which may be as attractive as the current group was. Among the eligible players are Sammy Sosa, Jason Giambi, Jeff Bagwell, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.

There is suspicion, however, that owners will initiate a signing freeze beginning next Nov. 1 as part of a determined effort to change the system. There also is potential for a lockout amid the suspicion that the signings of Rodriguez, Hampton, Manny Ramirez and others have so underscored the disparity issue that a ninth work stoppage is inevitable when the current bargaining agreement expires after the 2001 season.

It may be naive, but there are also reasons to think otherwise:

* The perception that baseball would be courting certain death with another shutdown, even though the Fox postseason contract guarantees payment even if games aren’t played.

* So much money is owed on the new stadiums and those under construction--and so much revenue is tied to those stadiums--that losses would be even more damaging than during the 1994 shutdown.

* The report by management’s blue-ribbon committee, expected to form the foundation of the owners’ labor approach, did not recommend a salary cap that the union would be certain to oppose but did recommend greater revenue sharing among the owners and a more restrictive luxury tax on high payrolls.

Are the high-revenue clubs willing to share more of their income?

Is the union, concerned that a restrictive tax is the same as a cap, willing to compromise?

Those are among many critical questions only time will answer, but this much is certain: There have been doomsday forecasts since Abner Doubleday and certainly since the Cleveland Indians wasted $2.3 million on the 10-year signing of pitcher Wayne Garland in 1976, the first winter of free agency.

The game has survived and will continue to, even if $2.3 million would be far short of even the signing bonus on A-Rod’s 10-year deal.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

ALEX RODRIGUEZ

New team: Texas Rangers

Contract: 10 years, $252 million

Average salary: $25.2 milion

*

MANNY RAMIREZ

New team: Boston Red Sox

Contract: Eight years, $160 million

Average salary: $20 million

*

MIKE HAMPTON

New team: Colorado Rockies

Contract: Eight years, $121 million

Average salary: $15.125 million