By LARRY LaRUE
The News Tribune
DALLAS – It wasn’t the money – more than twice the next highest contract in baseball history – that led free agent shortstop Alex Rodriguez to leave the Seattle Mariners and sign a 10-year deal with the Texas Rangers on Monday.
Instead, according to agent Scott Boras, the main reason Rodriguez accepted that 10-year, $252 million offer was the personal charm of Rangers owner Tom Hicks.
“We spent two days here after Thanksgiving, and Tom Hicks picked up Alex at the airport – picked his bags up and put them in his car – and they spent the better part of the next two days together,” Boras said. “Alex spent eight years in Seattle and never met the owner.”
And that made the difference?
“It wasn’t a positive,” Boras said.
On an emotional day for the Seattle Mariners executives here for the 2000 winter meetings, that explanation was nearly as galling as the loss of A-Rod, but not quite.
“I’ve watched Alex grow from a pup to one of the dominant players in the game,” manager Lou Piniella said. “This hurts. It’s a loss, and it hurts.”
Two days after ex-Mariner pitcher Mike Hampton signed the biggest deal in major league history, an eight-year $121 million contract with the Colorado Rockies, the Rangers more than doubled that in landing Rodriguez.
Though eight teams expressed interest initially, by the time A-Rod agreed to the Rangers deal only two teams had bids on the table – the Rangers and the Mariners.
And the Mariners’ offer wasn’t comparable.
“We knew (Sunday) that Scott wasn’t happy with the length or the amount in our offer,” Mariners general manager Pat Gillick said. “We had some wiggle room, but it wasn’t going to be a big wiggle.”
Unwilling to commit to a 10-year deal worth an average of $25 million a season, the Mariners offered the 25-year-old Rodriguez a five-year package that averaged $17 million a year and included incentives.
“They said they’d get back to us,” Gillick said Monday. “When they called us this morning, the train had left the station.”
Big-market teams like the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers had balked at making bids because of Rodriguez’s salary demands and contract stipulations, which included a salary escalator clause, a no-trade clause and an option to become a free agent again in seven years.
As for the “perks” that Boras discussed with Mets general manager Steve Phillips last month, items that so offended the team’s owner that he withdrew from further negotiation, none of that came up with Texas.
“Alex didn’t ask for anything any other player wouldn’t have asked for and gotten,” Hicks said. “He wanted suites for hockey and baseball, and bought them. He paid full price.”
Rodriguez, who made $4.3 million last season, is in for a dizzying change of salary. Including a signing bonus, which will be spread over the first five years of his contract, this is what A-Rod will be paid over the next 10 years:
If Rodriguez stays all 10 years, the deal will pay out $262 million, including the bonus clauses of the last two seasons. Over the life of the deal, $36 million will be deferred, and Rodriguez will be paid that money at three percent interest.
“In real money, the contract is worth much more than $252 million,” Boras said. “How much more, I don’t want to say.”
Rodriguez’s take on all this won’t be made public until today, when the Rangers hold another news conference, this one at The Ballpark at Arlington, to introduce their new shortstop.
When the Rodriguez Derby began more than a month ago, the Rangers weren’t even on A-Rod’s radar screen.
“All he knew about Arlington was the hotel, the ballpark and the parking lot,” Boras said. “That’s all he’d seen as a visiting player. The Rangers did a remarkable job of showing off their minor league system, the community – the hitting coach had lunch with Alex in the clubhouse during our visit, he met the whole hockey team.
“When Alex left, he had a whole new vision about Arlington. That’s when I knew he was serious about the Rangers. What he found in Texas was a well-run organization, willing to admit where they’d been and able to show him where they were going.”
At the end of the postseason, when the Mariners had lost to the New York Yankees in the American Legue Championship Series, Rodriguez had laid out what he expected from the team he would play for in 2001.
“I want a team committed to winning, with a tradition of winning, with a strong minor league farm system,” he said in October. “Money isn’t the biggest factor, the ability to win is.”
The Rangers won back-to-back division titles in 1998 and 1999, then finished in fourth place last season – 20 1/2 games behind the first-place Oakland Athletics, a fact Oakland GM Billy Beane noted.
“I’m happy for Alex,” Beane said, “but he played in the American League West last year and we beat his team with the lowest payroll in the division. We’ll do it again next year.”
Rangers GM Melvin had a different take.
“Signing Alex sends a message throughout baseball that the Rangers are serious about winning,” he said. “We hope it’s this year.”
“We signed him to a 10-year contract, and want him beyond that,” Hicks said. “Late in this contract, we’ll talk to him about an extension – we want him to play here the rest of his career.”
Hicks was asked if he agreed with Boras, that his own personal charm and persuasiveness had made A-Rod a Texas Ranger.
“Well, in Seattle the owner is a 72-year-old man who lives in Japan,” Hicks said. “I think (Alex) could relate to me.”
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