Byline: BOB KEISSER
Know what woke baseball legend Joe DiMaggio from that coma in a Florida hospital? Someone in his room mentioned that a 33-year-old pitcher named Kevin Brown had just signed a seven-year, $105 million contract.
The 84-year-old former Yankee shot up in bed, asked a nurse for his spikes and told his agent to get Scott Boras and Kevin Malone on the phone.
Seriously, Saturday's news flash hit baseball the way Hurricane Georges hit the Dominican Republic. Wreckage can be found from the commissioner's office to every small-market franchise.
This offseason money orgy wasn't the message baseball wanted to send its fans after a pretty magical season. All it does is drive home the prevailing theme of sports in the '90s: It's all about the money. There's no other interpretation. Everything boils down to who has it, who wants it and who gets it.
The big spenders have been those teams in big markets (Yankees, Mets) or flush with corporate money (Fox/Dodgers, Disney/Angels). Arizona has also been a player ($118 million worth), because having an expansion franchise these days pays off like bringing water to the desert.
The free-agent class of '99 will go down in history as the richest ever, and perhaps the most covetous. Every member of the nouveau riche signed on the dotted line for purely financial reasons. Don't listen to any of the spin about playing close to home, or playing for a contender, or wanting to stay with a particular franchise. It's all hooey.
Those fans still in Mike Piazza's camp are agog the Dodgers would give a pitcher seven years and $105 million after refusing to budge past six years and $84 million for a catcher with numbers like .300, 30 and 100. But in the final analysis, the man himself showed no proclivity to anything but getting the richest contract.
Why else would he stay in New York, where fans booed him? When push came to shove in L.A. and Fox-dom over Piazza, the words of Piazza's agent rang truest: If he doesn't get the jack here, he'll get it somewhere else. He did, $91 million from the Mets.
When Mo Vaughn turned down Boston's final offer and decided to play for $13 million-plus Disney dollars a year, Boston Globe columnist Will McDonough replayed the last few years of Vaughn's on-again, off-again negotiations with the Red Sox.
At various times in the process, McDonough reported, Vaughn turned down Red Sox offers of $9 million a year, $10 million a year, $11 million a year, $12 million a year and finally $13 million a year. In every case, the Red Sox offer would have made Vaughn one of the highest-salaried players in the game, if not the highest. Yet the Red Sox were the ones painted as disloyal.
When Randy Johnson and the Mariners were butting heads over a multiyear contract, Johnson accused the team of reneging on old promises and not caring about loyalty or fielding a winning team. But it was Johnson who mailed in his first-half performance last season before a post-trade salary drive in Houston.
And, it turns out, the entire free-agent game plan of Johnson and his agent from the start was to get the left-hander to the expansion D-Backs and his home in suburban Phoenix. And despite all of Arizona's investments, I doubt if Johnson will be playing for a winning team soon.
Today's news is Brown. By baseball standards, he's a pretty mercenary guy. The Dodgers will be his fourth team in five years. Yet the Dodgers' concern for his family, he says, put them over the top. The club agreed to jet them into town pretty much whenever he wants.
But if he was truly concerned about his family down in Macon, Ga., wouldn't Brown have agreed to take less money from the Braves and spare his family so much flight time? Or sign with St. Louis, which is much closer than L.A.? When your agent is Scott Boras, we're not inclined to believe anything mattered beyond becoming the first nine-digit man in baseball.
Tomorrow's news will be the trade of Roger Clemens to a franchise dedicated to winning, per a clause of the contract he signed with the Blue Jays. Toronto wasn't exactly sad sack city last year with a payroll of almost $40 million. But compared to the new ceilings being raised in New York and Los Angeles, the Jays are bottom feeders.
Ergo, a trade demand. Wherever Clemens goes, his agent will be sure to follow, with an offer to extend his client's contract and bring it in line with today's new reality. After all, Clemens is only 36, a mere three years older than Brown, who the Dodgers believe will pitch them into the 2005 World Series.
Spin the view of these numbers to the other direction and there's just as much carnage. This all started because owners like George Steinbrenner and Ted Turner refused to control themselves when free agency was in its diapers. As absurd as the Piazza and Brown contracts might seem, they make perfect sense alongside a few others.
Like Colorado giving Brian Bohanon $3.3 million a year, Baltimore giving Mike Timlin $4 million a year, Texas giving Royce Clayton $4.5 million a year, the Yankees giving Scott Brosius $5.2 million a year, Boston giving Jose Offerman $6.5 million a year, Detroit giving Dean Palmer $7.2 million a year and Arizona giving Todd Stottlemyre $8 million a year.
If I'm a baseball general manager, like the Dodgers' Kevin Malone, maybe I can explain all of this money malarkey. But I'm not a G.M. To me, anything over a $1 million is funny money. And I've stopped laughing.
MALONE METER
Rating moves made by Dodgers GM Kevin Malone.
Saturday: signed free agent right-hander Kevin Brown.
Our Rating: Home Run
This offseason: 4 for 4, single, double, HR
CAPTION(S):
Photo, Box
PHOTO The Dodgers made pitcher Kevin Brown, who's been with four teams in five years, the first $100-million man in baseball.
Kevork Djansezian/Associated Press
BOX: MALONE METER (see text)
