BOSTON -- They talked in the car. They talked in the office. They talked Sunday mornings. They talked after the sun had long since disappeared.

On one end of the phone was Mets GM Steve Phillips. On the other was Indians GM Mark Shapiro. The subject was Robbie Alomar, 12-time All-Star, 10-time Gold Glove winner, a man closing in on 2,400 career hits before he even turns 34 years old.

	“	But part of the general manager's job is to take a long-term vision. This is obviously a period of transition for us. A lot of our players are aging. We need to get a little younger. I look at this as taking a small step back to take a big step forward. ”
		— Cleveland GM Mark Shapiro

The conversations began during the World Series. They ended after midnight, as Monday turned into Tuesday, in a hotel suite in Boston. But in between, these two men might have spent more time talking to each other than they did to their wives.

"Seldom did two days go by all winter where we didn't talk," Shapiro said Tuesday, after announcing the eight-player deal that sent Alomar to the Mets for a five-player package headed by Matt Lawton and multitalented outfield prospect Alex Escobar. "I'd be in the office on a Sunday at 10 o'clock in the morning, and the phone would ring. I'd answer it, and it would be Steve. He knew I'd be in there working. And I knew he'd be working."

Phillips said, "Sometimes I'd call him, and sometimes he'd call me. We just kept bouncing one idea after another off each other. The thing that was amazing was, I'd be home on a weekend, or driving to a soccer game or a basketball game, and I'd call his office, and he'd always be there. And if he wasn't there, I'd leave a message and he'd call me back two minutes later and say, 'Sorry, I stepped away from my desk.'"

But Phillips knew he couldn't make this move without making another. He worked just as tirelessly to deal Robin Ventura to open an infield spot for Alomar. Then, once that trade fell together last week, he turned his full-time attention back to figuring something out with Shapiro.

By the time they arrived at the winter meetings, they'd talked for hours and hours, days and days. Still, they hadn't been able to figure out how to make this deal sensible for both teams.

"We bounced so many different ideas off each other," Phillips said, "I have notepad after notepad full of different players and ideas, even players on other clubs we thought we could try to bring back to make the deal work. Even as late as 11:30 last night, we were still trying to acquire players from a third team."

But as the clock ticked, the Mets kept adding players. Matt Lawton and Escobar were already settled on. The Mets then reluctantly agreed to include valuable set-up man Jerrod Riggan if the Indians gave them an arm (left-hander Mike Bacsik) back. They also consented to make their No. 1 pick in the 2000 draft, left-hander Billy Traber, part of the package as one of two players to be named later.

	Roberto Alomar Second Base New York Mets Profile
	2001 SEASON STATISTICS GM HR RBI R SB AVG 157 20 100 113 30 .336

Still, it wasn't until the middle of the evening that Phillips sensed Shapiro was finally willing to pull the trigger. So the Mets GM told himself he wasn't going to leave the room until he had a deal.

"Any time you have an opportunity to get a player like Robbie, that's an opportunity you don't get very often," Phillips said. "When you smell an opportunity like that, you have to keep going after it."

On the other end, this was a deal Mark Shapiro didn't want to make, didn't have to make, almost didn't make. But it was also a deal he never stopped thinking about.

Not just over the last week, the last month, the last month and a half, either. In fact, he's been mulling this one all year.

From the day John Hart announced last April he was stepping down after the season and handing the keys to the GM's office to Shapiro, both of them knew the Indians of Shapiro were not going to be the big-budget, big-name juggernaut they had been under Hart.

They were going to be younger. They were going to be cheaper. They were going to need a whole different kind of player.

A player kind of like Alex Escobar.

So special assistant Terry Francona was dispatched last spring to scout Escobar for weeks. After the June draft, scouting director John Mirabelli took over, watching Escobar night after night, series after series.

Even at age 23, six seasons into his professional career, the jury continues to deliberate on why a player this talented continues to look far from ready for prime time. He can look like Vladimir Guerrero one minute, Ruben Rivera the next. He has been a thorough enigma, his ascent to predicted stardom stalled by injuries, inconsistency and way too much swinging and missing.

"His strikeouts (165 this year) were a concern," Shapiro said. "But his tools never faded. We spent a lot of time following him closely this season. And in the end, we still felt his tools package was too good to resist. ... He's not a finished product. He's not ready to put it all together now. So there's an obvious risk factor. But the fact is, he's still a five-tool player."

And now, he becomes maybe the most important player in the entire Indians organization. Because what happens to Alex Escobar from here on in could well determine whether trading Robbie Alomar was the right move.

Lawton is the key piece for the moment. The Indians will look to him for energy, on-base presence and offensive creativity. "He gives us a multitude of ways to score runs," Shapiro said, "which we'll need as we move away from the home run as our primary way to produce runs."

Riggan, meanwhile, adds another live arm to what might now be the deepest bullpen in the league.

But in Cleveland, they won't be lining up at the box office to watch Jerrod Riggan pitch the top of the sixth inning. It's the Mets who now employ one of the most charismatic, most creative second basemen ever to play. It's the Indians who need to convince their fans this does not constitute giving up.

"I think I might need a flak jacket when I get off the plane," Shapiro quipped. "But I understand that fans are always looking at what these deals mean in the short term, right now. And I sympathize with that. The fan part of me struggles with losing a Hall of Fame player like Robbie.

"But part of the general manager's job is to take a long-term vision. This is obviously a period of transition for us. A lot of our players are aging. We need to get a little younger. I look at this as taking a small step back to take a big step forward."

So now Shapiro moves on to the next deal, maybe doing business with his old boss, Hart, to swap Russell Branyan for a second baseman who just hit .330 (Frank Catalanotto).

But while the Indians worry about transitions, the Mets have maneuvered themselves into position to become the favorite in the NL East. They're still looking at a bunch of moves around the corner -- maybe sending David Justice to Oakland for prospects or pitching depth, while exploring deals for Jeromy Burnitz or Bobby Higginson. And while that goes on, Alomar already has started recruiting Juan Gonzalez.

"Really?" Phillips laughed, when informed of that news. "So he's a Gold Glove, a Silver Slugger and a scout."

Well, they always said Robbie Alomar was a guy who could do it all. But for the Mets, he's more than just a .336 hitter, 20-20 club member and human Web Gem. He gives the Mets the star power they need in a town where the Yankees seem to play the big stage every night while the Mets get buried off Broadway.

"He brings us a certain 'wow' factor," Phillips said. "Obviously, the talent factor is really the No. 1 issue. But Robbie gives us a level of excitement and credibility -- which we needed to win over the fans."

So in the end, even with all the talented players he gave up, this was a trade Phillips knew he had to make. For Shapiro, though, it's difficult to imagine any trade he'll ever make as a GM will be harder to make than his first.

"I think Mark deserves a lot of credit," Phillips said. "This is his first big trade. And obviously, even though they have a little different philosophy now than they've had, he still had the guts to step out and make a big deal that probably won't play as well in Cleveland as it will in New York. Hopefully, over the long term, this will be a win-win deal for both teams."

In the meantime, though, it leaves two GMs with a void in their lives. What are they going to do every day with all the time they used to occupy just talking to each other?

"I don't know," Shapiro said. "We'll just have to make another deal."

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.