Red Sox President Larry Lucchino ranted in numerous calls to Bud Selig and his top lieutenants over the past few days in a failed attempt to get the commissioner to invoke his “best interest of baseball” clause to nullify the trade sending Alex Rodriguez to the Yankees, according to two baseball officials not with the Yankees.
Major League President Bob DuPuy said Lucchino was among a “handful” of officials from clubs who phoned members of the commissioner’s inner circle to raise “concern about what this trade would do to competitive balance and to the perception that the Yanks will always just buy what they need.”
However, DuPuy said it was “overstatement” to say Lucchino raised his voice or harangued to try to get Selig to block a deal of A-Rod to the Yankees.
Neither Lucchino nor Selig returned calls. Major League VP Rob Manfred, who the sources said also fielded calls from Lucchino, said: “I am not going to comment on my conversations with club officials. It is not appropriate.”
Lucchino and the Yankees, particularly George Steinbrenner, have a long-running feud. It was heightened last offseason when Lucchino dubbed the Yanks the “Evil Empire” when they beat out Boston for Jose Contreras.
The Red Sox again have been outdone by the Yanks after going from the brink of obtaining A-Rod, to failing to get him due to financial reasons, to watching the Yanks bag the majors’ best player.
“Did [Lucchino] have a conversation with us? Yes,” DuPuy said. “But it was no different from anybody else’s.”
All of those conversations revolved, DuPuy said, around the Yanks taking their payroll toward $200 million. The Yanks will pay around $80 million in luxury tax and revenue sharing and, DuPuy said, that is a positive sign of how the last collective-bargaining agreement was structured to address competitive balance issues.
However, DuPuy said that appearances look bad right now with the Yankees adding A-Rod to their already star-studded, salary-bloated cast, and he said that is why the “commissioner really struggled with [whether to approve the trade].”
DuPuy said ultimately the fact that the Yanks gave a talented player back (Alfonso Soriano), that the money ($67 million) in the trade actually went from Texas to New York and that he considers A-Rod’s contract so distinct made this a “unique” case and worthy of approving.
Selig was ready to go to much greater lengths to approve A-Rod’s deal to the Red Sox, but DuPuy insists that the commissioner did not OK this deal to avoid further appearance that he is anti-Yankee and/or pro-Red Sox.
