When the Red Sox originally offered Manny Ramirez in trade to the other 29 teams, they went 0-for-29. Red Sox GM Theo Epstein made tens of calls and found no takers.
Things were looking bleak. Ramirez was apparently being viewed as an active, goofier version of Barry Bonds, an unwanted all-time great. At that point it appeared that the increasingly uneasy, unhappy marriage of the Red Sox and Ramirez might have to stay together for what would have been a messy final two to three months.
Then someone within baseball's best front office had an idea. The Red Sox, who had grown weary of Ramirez's antics and attitude and badly wanted him out of their clubhouse, decided to enhance their offer. When Epstein made his next round of calls, he was now offering to pay the remainder of Ramirez's $20 million 2008 salary. It was an unusual and unprecedented $7 million incentive for such a productive and vital player.
Despite that, only three teams showed even a modicum of interest: the Dodgers, Phillies and Marlins.
Ramirez, who never felt completely comfortable in baseball-crazed Boston's fishbowl existence, set the stage for a trade by signing an agreement in advance to go to whatever team agreed to drop his two $20 million club options, for 2009 and '10. Yet the field for a deal was oddly small.
Only three teams wanted him, and as it turns out only one of those three was willing to return enough to Boston to make it work. It didn't hurt that the one team happy to do the deal was run by a Bostonian, Frank McCourt, who makes it a hobby to collect ex-Red Sox players for his Dodgers. Sources say McCourt was extremely involved in this trade, and that he in fact was the driving force behind it: no surprise since he previously added ex-Red Sox Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Lowe, Bill Mueller and Grady Little.
But word was going around baseball that McCourt's Dodgers were difficult to deal with, that McCourt pulled back a trade for CC Sabathia, that the Dodgers had too many chiefs running the team and that they were too protective of every last youngster. One of many anti-Dodger columns was written here. But the Dodgers ultimately would prove me, as well as several others, wrong.
And by the way, it's a misconception that any team other than the Dodgers, Phillies and Marlins ever showed any interest. Neither the Mets nor anyone else wanted to deal.
As was presumably the case for many other teams, sources say that the Mets didn't want to risk bringing Ramirez and all his baggage into their clubhouse. But strangely, after the Mets had stood pat at the deadline, GM Omar Minaya suggested on a conference call that the reason they couldn't make a deal for Ramirez was that Boston had requested a big-league outfielder back. That claim must have come from Minaya's very vivid imagination and appears to have been an attempt to cover for the Mets or possibly refrain from exposing their true feelings about a Ramirez trade. In reality the Red Sox had called the Mets and were told no, and that was the end of that.
As we know now, the Dodgers ultimately didn't have to give up a big-league outfielder (or any sort of outfielder), and they still managed to get the deal done. It took until 3:59 p.m. ET on Thursday, one minute before the deadline, but the deal got done, and it enhanced the Dodgers' pennant hopes, relieved the Red Sox of their problem child and continued the rebuilding process for the depleted Pirates.
Red Sox people decided early on that the outfielder the Red Sox needed to get all along was coming from Pittsburgh. That was Jason Bay, a solid two-time All-Star. Boston realized early in the game that Bay was their best hope, and perhaps their only hope, to replace Ramirez's bat in their lineup. There may have been early flirtations with Atlanta regarding Mark Teixeira and Colorado about Matt Holliday, but those two superstars would have cost them way too much in terms of prospects and major leaguers.
Bay isn't nearly the same hitter as Ramirez, but he was as close as Epstein could come in this trade market. And what's more, Bay's reasonable contract ran another year for a well-under-market $7.5 million (he's probably worth twice that, making Boston feel better about paying the remainder of Ramirez's 2008 salary). So for giving away two months of a disgruntled Ramirez, Epstein got back at least eight months of a committed and eager Bay. That was something he could live with.
But, in order to get Bay, Epstein would have to get what Pittsburgh sought. He had three chances to do it: the Dodgers, Phillies and Marlins.
The Red Sox agreed to send Pittsburgh reliever Craig Hansen, a potential closer and solid young outfielder Brandon Moss. Then they went looking for the rest of the package.
Several days before the deadline the Red Sox first requested Matt Kemp from Los Angeles, a seemingly reasonable proposition considering that the ultra-talented Kemp was known to be frustrating some of his bosses, including manager Joe Torre, with his inconsistent play and baffling baserunning.
The Dodgers said no.
The Red Sox lowered their request to a combination of young outfielder Andre Ethier and third-base prospect Andy LaRoche. Considering L.A.'s excess of outfielders and LaRoche's falling stock, that seemed more reasonable.
The Dodgers still said no.
The Dodgers still were showing interest early in the week. But by Wednesday the Red Sox turned their attention to the Phillies and Marlins, leaving L.A. wondering whether it was now out.
The Phillies were a team said to excite Ramirez. They have a great lineup and an even better ballpark for him to put up big second-half numbers and enhance his free-agent value. The Phillies had interest but were apparently offering even less than L.A. They may have had concerns about how Ramirez would fit into the same outfield with Pat Burrell.
The low-budget Marlins were up next. They appeared to be sensing a kill, so they tried for a killer deal. Jeremy Hermida was one name talked about. Gaby Hernandez was another, but Hernandez went to Seattle for reliever Arthur Rhodes.
Slugging outfield prospect Mike Stanton would not be included by the Marlins. Other decent prospects would not be included either. Plus the Marlins wanted Boston to not only pay Ramirez's $7 million salary but also to ship them $2 million more to cover the draft choices they'd get when they let Ramirez leave as a free agent after the year. So in other words Florida wanted Boston to pay for three of its players for accepting the Cooperstown-bound Ramirez.
A lot of possible scenarios were discussed for days with Florida. But there never was an agreement on players and dollars.
The Marlins "overplayed their hand,'' in the words of one person familiar with the dealings.
So sometime on deadline day the Red Sox went back to the Dodgers. At that point some Red Sox people remained skeptical that the Dodgers would relent or ever be reasonable. There were different points on deadline day where they began to doubt that they would trade the player they were determined to trade.
The Red Sox requested struggling shortstop prospect Chin-lung Hu (.159 average in 107 major league at-bats this season) but were told that he was on L.A.'s untouchable list. At that point Boston people understandably began to wonder whether the Dodgers would be any easier to deal with than Florida.
The Pirates were also driving a hard bargain. Their new GM, Neal Huntington, had gotten slammed in the media for his Yankees deal involving Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte (in baseball circles it was somewhat better received), and the Red Sox sensed that Huntington was determined to get a haul for Bay.
At one point, after the haggling with the Marlins and Dodgers appeared to be going nowhere, the Red Sox became frustrated enough to talk to Ramirez's agent, Scott Boras, about the viability of keeping Manny. Boras told them what they suspected all along, that he'd be much happier to stay if the option years were dropped. That appeared to have reinforced Boston's long-understood belief that Ramirez was too distracted by the contract to perform for them.
Boston's players and staff showed no real interest in keeping Manny around, anyway. One landmark moment came when Ramirez complained of knee pain but couldn't recall which knee was hurting him. Red Sox doctors had to take the unusual step of evaluating both the right and left knee in an MRI exam. Neither showed any damage, furthering Boston's suspicion that Ramirez's real problem wasn't physical.
Eventually, Boston got L.A. to agree to sign off on LaRoche, one player that the Pirates sought. (They already had LaRoche's brother Adam.) But the Pirates wanted more. They gave a list of names to the Red Sox to present to the Dodgers.
With the clock ticking (it was actually 3:59 by this point), the Dodgers agreed to pick one of those names, Class-A pitcher Bryan Morris, and include him with LaRoche. The deal was done, and Manny was a Dodger. The Dodgers agreed to pay a $1 million bonus to Ramirez as stipulated in the $160-million Red Sox contract that he grew to hate (technically, it was now called a roster bonus instead of an assignment bonus).
But that money was made up by the Dodgers within hours. Thirty thousand walkup tickets were sold within 24 hours of the trade, and 300 rest-of-season tickets were sold. Manny Mania was taking off in L.A.
The Red Sox were determined to move Ramirez once he showed that his main interest was getting the $20 million club options removed. Epstein's big goal was to get a reasonable replacement, that being Bay, and he did that. But there wasn't real celebrating in Boston. They didn't want to have to trade Ramirez; rather they felt they had to.
The Red Sox did well to get seven-plus years out of Ramirez, along with two World Series rings, then replace him with a reasonable player. Ramirez is a big loss to the defending World Series champions. But no one inside their clubhouse voiced one word of objection to the deal. Bay was welcomed in, and Boston went back to business, sweeping the A's at home over the weekend with Bay off to a fast start playing his first meaningful games in his new, tough town.
Eventually, Ramirez left the Red Sox little choice through his self-centered actions and words over the past few weeks. The celebrating was being done in Los Angeles, where the Dodgers capitalized on Boston's misfortune. Now Ramirez is threatening to lead an L.A. revival. He has begun with eight hits, including two homers, in his first 13 at-bats. The game is easy for him when he's trying.
More celebrating was being done by Ramirez, whose misbehavior will probably make him millions. Ramirez was thrilled to be in more laid-back L.A., dreaming of free agency to come.
