DALLAS -- Another day. Another $20-million-a-year contract. Another swarm of baseball men shaking their heads, wondering when their romantic little game turned into a board-of-directors meeting at Citicorp.
On Tuesday, it is Manny Ramirez's turn to begin his official next life as a $160-million corporation. The Red Sox were planning a late-afternoon announcement that Ramirez had finished two days worth of agonizing and decided to move his reign of offensive terror to New England.
|  | | Manny Ramirez hit a career high .351 last season for the Indians. |
The contract details would shake your brain cells -- if they hadn't already been devoured by the sight of Alex Rodriguez's $252-million deal the day before. But here goes that Manny Report, ready or not:
Sources told ESPN that Ramirez is guaranteed $160 million for eight years.
The Red Sox have club options for 2009 and 2010 at $20 million apiece.
There are no triggers that automatically guarantee the option years.
There is a $16-million signing bonus -- six of which is paid out immediately. The other $10 million is deferred.
A total of $31 million in the contract is deferred.
His annual salary will be as follows:
$13 million in 2001.
$15.5 million in 2002.
$18 million in 2003.
$20.5 million in 2004.
$20 million in 2005.
$19 million in 2006.
$18 million in 2007.
$20 million in 2008.
There are also award bonuses:
$200,000 for winning an MVP award.
$125,000 for finishing second, $100,000 for third, $75,000 for fourth, $50,000 for fifth.
$75,000 for making the All Star team.
$150,000 for World Series MVP.
$150,000 for LCS MVP.
$100,000 for Silver Slugger.
Ramirez will donate $1 million to Boston area charities that benefit Latino youth.
It was a deal agreed to Monday night, even as Red Sox GM Dan Duquette and Ramirez's agent, Jeff Moorad, were packing their suitcases and their dollar signs to escape the winter meetings in Dallas and fly back to Boston, to set the stage for Ramirez's physical Tuesday morning and his press conference Tuesday afternoon.
It was a deal agreed to after 36 hours of whirlwind negotiations with two different teams, complete with nonstop phone calls from prominent personalities affiliated with both teams, with Ramirez seemingly changing his mind every five minutes, with lawyers and owners and accountants trying their best to digest every ramification.
"Here's the way I would describe it," Moorad said Monday morning. "This was a cliffhanger to the end. Manny and I felt he had two very credible options to choose from. In the end, he just made the decision to take the challenge of picking up his career with a new organization -- and to enjoy what he felt was a more significant economic package from Boston."
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This was a cliffhanger to the end.
Manny and I felt he had two very credible options
to choose from. In the end, he just made the
decision to take the challenge of picking up his
career with a new organization -- and to enjoy
what he felt was a more significant economic
package from Boston. ” |
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— Agent Jeff Moorad |
But it wasn't that simple. Is it ever?
On Sunday afternoon, Moorad marched into the Cleveland suite at the Wyndham Anatole hotel, to meet a group of Indians executives who were certain this would be a brief, thanks-for-the-memories kind of meeting.
Instead, Moorad made it very clear that if all things were equal -- or even close -- Ramirez would prefer to remain an Indian. And that launched a remarkable effort by the Indians to keep their most imposing offensive force.
"We worked very hard to try to get this player to come back," Indians assistant GM Mark Shapiro said Tuesday morning. "Our owner extended to a place we should never have extended financially to try to sign the guy. We made an offer that was very serious in terms of years, and the contract dollars were about the same as Boston's."
The difference, though, was that Cleveland's offer had far more deferred money, far more backloaded money, far less "present-day value" -- an expression that has become as big a part of the baseball dictionary this winter as "hit-and-run."
So in the end, Ramirez took the money, took the "challenge," took on the Curse of the Bambino so courageously that he was willing to accept a World Series MVP bonus clause with a straight face.
But he almost didn't, according to several sources.
"We slept two hours Sunday night," Shapiro said. "We met with (Moorad) till 3 in the morning. We were talking with our owner's lawyer till 4. We were on the phone with the owner at 6. That's how hard we worked to keep this guy. But today, we're up and moving on the next guy, on where we go from here."
So they're still talking with free agent David Segui. They're exploring deals for bullpen help and possible outfield bats. They're still the Indians. They still play in the AL Central. They'll still be very good.
But with Ramirez's departure, you can also see that Cleveland's window of opportunity closing another inch, as the dollars elsewhere go crazier and the money-making machinery of Jacobs Field begins to pale when measured against the media-driven income of the other high-profile giants.
"I thought Cleveland handled the whole thing really well," said an executive from one of their chief AL competitors. "They put their offer out there and said, 'Here it is. There's nothing more to offer.' Then they waited for the guy to come back and say he was interested. Then they said, 'What can we do to sign the guy?' And they did exactly what they could do, but no more.
"It's a big hit. They lost Manny. They might lose Segui. Those are big losses. But I still think they'll be fine. It's not like their division is so tough. There's no one out there in their division that's gotten any better."
But as one era ended in Cleveland, another one begins in Boston. And what this means for the Red Sox is harder to assess.
Where does the money come from? That's the first big question.
Unlike the Rangers, who can justify their deal with A-Rod as a corporate acquisition designed to move them from baseball's American Exchange to the Big Board, the Red Sox are different.
They play in a ballpark built in 1912, that seats just slightly more than 34,000 people when filled to capacity. They already sell out just about every game. They have a mediocre TV-radio contract. Their team is for sale. Their city has no desire to build them a new ballpark.
So where does the money come from to add a $20-million-a-year baseball player? Good question.
"I can explain that decision in two words," said one skeptical baseball official. "No owner."
There is a sense that because the Red Sox are a team up for sale, their ownership looks at this Ramirez bill as someone else's price tag. And there is a sense that, after a huge ticket increase and a disappointing season, they targeted Ramirez as a guy they had to have -- almost at any cost.
"I'm really struggling with what they were thinking on this one," said another baseball official. "The desperation of the Red Sox really showed. And the agent sat there and took advantage. How can you walk in and offer 120-something million dollars, and then a few hours later go to 140-something million, and then end up at 160?"
Publicly, the Indians have admitted to offering only $138 million over eight years. But in fact, according to sources familiar with the negotiations, they originally guaranteed more than the $144 million the Red Sox offered (not figuring the impact of all the deferrals). And that forced the Red Sox to hike their offer yet again, to $160 million.
Another baseball source outside the negotiations said, though, that he thought Moorad decided in the end that Cleveland actually was a better destination for Ramirez than Boston -- and tried everything he could to maneuver his client to that destination.
But the dollars didn't add up -- particularly after the Red Sox added more of them in the final hours.
"In the end," Shapiro said, "the spread was too significant. But that was the way it had to be. They felt they had to sign the guy. We didn't. We couldn't."
But whatever they were thinking, however they're planning to raise the money, Ramirez makes the Red Sox offense awfully scary. Any team that runs a middle of the order out there with Ramirez, Nomar Garciaparra and Carl Everett out there will be no fun to pitch to.
Garciaparra and Everett both hit over .350, had on-base percentages over .430. All three hit .300. All three had slugging percentages close to .600 or, in Manny's case, close to .700. That's a lot of damage waiting to happen.
"To me, Manny might be the best hitter in the game," said one scout Tuesday. "I'm not sure where he'll be in 10 years. But right now, he gives that team a very formidable lineup. Except they're still not going to win the World Series, because they still have one pitcher (Mr. Pedro Martinez, ladies and gentlemen). They haven't addressed the rest of that staff at all.
"When you look at the big moves of the week, Texas and Boston might have made the same mistake. They're trying to win with their bats. But they never addressed their pitching. So when the Red Sox get into the postseason, Pedro wins Game 1. But who wins Game 2? Who wins Game 3? Paxton Crawford? Tomo Ohka? I don't know. That staff is not going to get it done."
But those are issues for another day, a day when the sun shines down on Fenway and the scoreboard out there on the Monster says it's 12-9 in the fifth inning.
For this day, there was just the glory of signing the best hitter in the game, for a price tag about a zillion times what it once cost to build Fenway Park. And if that leaves folks from 29 other teams shaking their heads and muttering under their breaths, that's the business baseball has become in this holiday season, here in the year 2000.
And quite a business it is, too.
Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer at ESPN.com.
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