This date will live in infamy. I don't think Franklin D. Roosevelt was speaking about baseball free agency when he uttered that renowned remark, but you get the point. Today is a big day for baseball and mainly for the Boston Red Sox. Why? Because Thursday is the deadline for the Sox to sign Daisuke Matsuzaka, and if Boston wants the guy to take a physical before throwing on the Boston threads, it might be a good idea to get the contract worked out by midnight tonight.
But we are faced with a new question: Does Boston really care?
Let's backtrack a little bit. The Japanese phenom who led his country to a World Baseball Classic Championship this past summer with his blazing fastball and knee-buckling curve was the talk of this fall's free agent class that included Alfonso Soriano, Carlos Lee, Jason Schmidt and still, Barry Zito.
However, in order to acquire Matsuzaka, teams needed to place bids to his Japanese club, the Seibu Lions, simply so that they could negotiate with him and his agent, Scott Boras, just as the Mariners did with Ichiro Suzuki back in 2000. The Yankees offered $39 million, second to the astronomical bid of $51.1 million by Boston.
That was Nov. 14 and this is now. There are two days left until time runs out and Matsuzaka returns to the Lions and the club collects none of the $51 million. And thus, we return to the question: Does Boston care?
General manager Theo Epstein and those in charge at Fenway offered Japan's biggest star $7-8 million per year, when Boras made it clear that his client was looking for a contract in the $15 million range. And it doesn't seem like the Red Sox are budging.
To the naked eye, this may just look like awful negotiation skills on the part of Boston management, but to the trained investigator, it seems like more. When the results of the bidding were first made public, it was obvious Boston overbid to ensure themselves that the Yankees would not acquire Matsuzaka, but now it's even more obvious.
Unless the Red Sox can get Matsuzaka for their price, it seems they don't care at all. He can go back to Japan and the Red Sox won't be hurt at all. They can even go after Roger Clemens and Mark Mulder.
In fact, they can make the same bid of $51 million every year and never sign Matsuzaka for an exorbitant amount of money. Unless the Yankees outbid Boston with a higher amount, we may see this situation year after year.
The system is flawed and Boston is taking full advantage of it. They will do anything so that the Yankees do not have the upper hand. The comeback from three games down in the 2005 ALCS and the subsequent World Series Championship was not enough. They need more.
In fact, they've always needed to one-up the Yankees. They snagged Cliff Floyd from the Expos in 2002 so that New York couldn't acquire the powerful lefty and they tried to snatch Bernie Williams out of pinstripes in 1998. This isn't anything new.
Maybe they're obsessed and still haven't gotten over the fact that they haven't won a division title since 1995 when Fox analyst Kevin Kennedy was their manager, but they won't stop.
Look, I hate the Yankees as much as the next guy, and not seeing Matsuzaka in the south Bronx is a terrific thing. But there comes a time when a team's management should focus on the needs of their team and not the needs of their competition.
But as a fan, if it means one less star in Yankee Stadium, I'm all for it.
Sam can be reached at sepepper@wisc.edu.
