Beat(en) Writer

Our favorite whipping boy returns.  In today's column, in reference to the current Pedro saga, Murray Chass drops a whopper.  Try to gut your way through this one (bold type my emphasis):

A year ago, the Red Sox did what they felt made sense for the club. When the Red Sox were trying to obtain Alex Rodriguez from Texas, they negotiated with Rodriguez to alter his contract. But when the players union refused to let Rodriguez devalue the contract by $28 million and proposed $13 million instead, the Red Sox rejected the plan and dropped their efforts to get Rodriguez, who wound up with the Yankees.

It's open to debate which team benefited from the Red Sox' resistance to paying more money than they wanted that time.

Is he serious?! Now, if Murray wants to get into a long discussion of the long-term benefits of having someone like A-Rod on the team, because of marketing, tv ratings, other issues, then that's one thing.  But to make a claim like this right after the Sox win the World Series and right after they embarrass the Yankees (and Slappy himself in a famous incident not worth rehashing) in the biggest choke in baseball history is beyond belief.  If there's one issue which is, at this early point in the life of the deal, inarguable, it is that the Red Sox most clearly benefitted more than they ever could have imagined when they decided not to accept the terms of the Player's Union. Their decision at that time not to attain A-Rod led, quite fortuitously, and not necessarily by design, to the departure of Garciaparra, to the acquisition of Cabrera, and to the World Championship. I ask, for about the seventh time, PLEASE, will someone unplug Murray's laptop?

Comments

[Joe (YF)]

Sox won WS because they got Schilling, period. They would have won WS if they had gotten AROD as well. But if they had gotten AROD and not Schilling, I doubt it, but we'll never know. If Yanks get RJ they can offset Schilling. It's wide open again. As it stands, if they don't get RJ, Sox should be favorites. It's plain and simple, it happens every year. The team with the pitching stud(s) wins. That's the way it was with the Yankees, that's the way it was with Arizona and Florida, and with the Sox last year. This ain't rocket science. Schilling is an ass, a prima donna, and a publicity whore. But when it comes down to it, when the games mean something, there is no one in major league baseball you'd rather have on the mound, except once again, maybe RJ. That's why the Yankees need him. The big 3 in Oakland are nice, but what have they done in the playoffs?