Wrote this yesterday: When Lupica lays off Rove and Cheney and Halliburton and college football and sticks to New York sports teams, he's as good as they come.
Today he's in top form:
If Alex Rodriguez wants to come back to the Yankees, and there are people close to him in Miami who think he does, here is how it happens, and maybe happens soon:
He starts by going to Tampa and meeting with George Steinbrenner and Hank Steinbrenner and Hal Steinbrenner and tries to make things right. Then he tells them he will eat some of the money the Yankees were getting on the last three years of the contract he signed seven years ago with the Rangers. Then he tells them he is sorry for the way his agent, Scott Boras, opted out of his contract, the way Boras acted insulted about an offer he never even allowed the Steinbrenners to make, even though this is the family that makes the best offers in the business.
Finally, A-Rod gives them the money quote, the one that gets the Steinbrenners to back off their ultimatum about not negotiating with him ever again, tells them that he wants to spend the rest of his career as a Yankee, the way a great Yankee named Bernie Williams did once.
If Rodriguez does all of this, it means that he takes control of his career and his life at last. He does not let Boras call the shots on his career and his life the way Boras has since A-Rod was 16 years old. He finally realizes that even the top agent in baseball is supposed to be an advocate for his player and not himself. If A-Rod does all this, he gets the Yankees to do an epic about-face, negotiate with him when they said they wouldn’t.
This is the family that makes the best offers in the business.
So true. So true.
And so good of Lupica--who has had an on-again, off-again feud with Steinbrenner for thirty years; who coined the term "Boss'; who repeatedly goosed Steinbrenner for hating, hating the credit Torre received for the Yankees success (achieved, let's give credit where due, with Steinbrenner's money)--to point out the Steinbrenners' largesse.
End of the day, the Steinbrenners want to win, and are willing to pay the price. In the world of sports, you can't say that about the Lorias, the Bidwells, and whoever the hell owns the Devil Rays or the Boston Bruins. That fact isn't nothing.
1 comment:
I was done with A-Rod. I'm glad the Yankees stood their ground, and Borass and A-Rod had no serious suitors at 350 Mil, but frankly he was already gone and I was fine with that.
In fact, I would rather have Santana than A-Rod. Time and time again, in the post season it's pitching. And with A-Rod seemingly gone, and the Yanks with a ton of money and pressure to put another great team together, I feel they were willing to do anything to get Johan. Now? Who knows?
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