[新聞] Power struggle in Red Sox front office
G.M. Epstein either will walk or supplant Lucchino as No. 2 behind owner
COMMENTARY
By Ron Borges
NBCSports.com contributor
Updated: 12:33 p.m. ET Oct. 27, 2005
This time it's really not about the money. At least not any more.
This time it's about the student wanting to challenge the teacher.
It's the long-compliant aide wanting to flex his muscles at the expense of
his mentor. It's the son needing to step out of the shadow of his father.
From the first moment Theo Epstein entered the real world of baseball he owed
it all to Larry Lucchino. That continued right up to the moment the Red Sox
won the World Series for the first time in 86 years. Right then all debts
were paid. Epstein was no longer the youngest general manager in baseball,
something Lucchino made him two years earlier at 28.
He wasn't the young acolyte serving at the feet of his king any more. Now he
was the guy who did what nine general managers before him over a span of
nearly 100 years could not do. He was the general manager who signed Curt
Schilling and Kevin Foulke. He had the cajones to trade franchise fixture
Nomar Garciaparra in the middle of the season and came out on top. He was
what Billy Beane was supposed to be when Beane turned down Lucchino's $2.5
million a year offer to run the Red Sox after first accepting it, a shocking
reversal that propelled the little known Epstein into a seat he seemed
unready for.
He was the architect of a World Series champion. Period. No Lucchino included.
Now there have always been whispers around Boston that Epstein was a puppet
behind whose back Lucchino was pulling the strings. At the time Beane
reversed his field, some in baseball felt it was in part because of
Lucchino's hands on nature. Whatever the reason, Beane stayed in Oakland and
Lucchino elevated Epstein. Now the Red Sox club president is reaping what he
sowed.
When Lucchino first came to Boston from San Diego, he brought an unknown kid
named Epstein with him to serve as assistant general manager. At the time he
said of him, "This is a gifted person with a real opportunity to have a
profound impact on this franchise.''
Lucchino had no idea at the time how right he was. Today, less than 24 hours
after Epstein turned down a three-year contract offer worth an estimated $1.2
million a season that would have more than tripled his pay of a year ago and
put him in league with the top echelon of general managers in the game, he
does — and he's not happy about it.
What is obvious is that the "kid'' who started as a media relations intern in
the Baltimore Orioles' front office and then served in much the same capacity
in San Diego when he first got there, no longer wants to answer to the man
who made it all possible. Originally the Sox tried to lowball Epstein, whose
deal runs out Nov. 1. They wanted of him what he kept demanding at their
insistence from some of their best players. They wanted a hometown discount
from the kid who grew up a short walk from Fenway Park.
They didn't get it.
First he spurned a three-year deal that averaged $850,000 a season, which he
could rightfully argue was well below his market value. Now he's turned his
back on a deal that wouldn't be that far below the one the Yankees just
offered their general manager, Brian Cashman. Cashman's deal is for three
years at $5 million for a guy who's been in the job for eight years. Epstein
is still on his rookie deal but in those three years he went from wonder boy
to Wonder Boy. Now Lucchino is wondering what happened to the kid.
The teams Epstein and his staff assembled came within one bad pitch of going
to back-to-back World Series. They won the entire thing in 2004 with the
greatest comeback from the brink of disaster in the history of professional
sports. After falling behind three games to one to the hated Yankees in last
year's American League Championship Series, they swept the final three games
and then four straight against the St. Louis Cardinals to bring the first
World Series championship to Fenway Park since 1918. Right then Theo was "the
kid'' no more. Now he was a celebrity. He was an icon. He was, perhaps,
beyond Lucchino's control.
This year was a struggle however, beginning with the decision to offer Pedro
Martinez a deal they knew he wouldn't take and ending with a sweep of the Red
Sox by the soon-to-be world champion Chicago White Sox in the first round of
the playoffs. In between, there was much turmoil in the locker room and
growing tension between Lucchino, who may be the most publicly seen club
president in baseball, and Epstein, who on several occasions indicated he
didn't agree with his boss' way of airing the team's dirty linen in the local
media.
The Friends of Theo keep saying this is not a power struggle. Yet at the same
time, well-placed leaks hinted at "chain of command issues'' that indicated
Epstein may no longer want to report to the man who created him but instead
directly to team owner John Henry. For once, neither side is talking
publicly, but that doesn't mean they're not getting their messages across.
Certainly one thing is clear after Epstein rejected the Red Sox's $1.2
million-a-year offer. It's not about the money for once. Now he's got the
money in a contract that would be only $400,000 short of the one Atlanta
Braves' G.M. John Schuerholz has. Schuerholz is believed to be the
highest-paid general manager in the game who has no other title (like club
president, etc.), at $1.6 million. He's built teams that have won 14 straight
division titles (which happens to be 13 more than Epstein's Red Sox) and one
world championship (which happens to be the same as Epstein's Red Sox).
So no one can say the Red Sox haven't made a fair offer to their fair-haired
boy. Then again, their first offer was only 20 percent of what they offered
Beane three years ago to accomplish exactly what Epstein has accomplished —
which was to finally bring a world championship team to Boston's loyal and
long-suffering fans. He did it. Now he wants the man who gave him that
opportunity to stand down. Or at least stand back and let him run the show
his way, which is decidedly less public than Lucchino's way.
How many baseball club president's have their own local radio show?
One. Theo would probably like to see that number reduced by ... well ... one.
How many club president's don't make more than the employee who answers to
them? None. Theo would probably like to see that number increased by ... well
... one.
How many club president's are going to sit there and let a kid who won't be
32 until Dec. 29 do to him what he let the kid do to well-respected long-time
baseball men like former G.M. Mike Port, whom Epstein and his cabal of young
computer geeks treated like he was Methuselah until he finally left the
organization? Theo would probably like to see that number increased by ...
well ... one ... but he may be in for a surprise there.
What is going on at Fenway Park is a blatant power grab by a kid who either
believes his press clippings or is willing to walk or perhaps both.
By turning down the Red Sox's first offer, he forced them to give him a fair
one. By rejecting their fair offer, he's putting himself at odds with
Lucchino and senior management, which he can't be because he's not a senior
yet. In fact, World Series ring or no World Series ring, he's still a junior
in Lucchino's eyes. Still "the kid.'' Still the guy he plucked out of the
press release writing department of the game and put into baseball operations
in San Diego when he just as easily could have taken someone else out of the
backroom.
When he turned the keys to the car over to Epstein three years ago in Boston,
Lucchino trusted him to take it where it needed to go, but he never expected
a car jacking. But he might have known all along what could happen if he'd
taken to heart the words of Epstein's father, a Boston University creative
writing professor, when he was first asked to comment on his then 28-year-old
son's appointment to general manager of the Red Sox.
"What's the fuss?'' Leslie Epstein said at the time. "At Theo's age,
Alexander The Great was already general manager of the world.''
Now Lucchino is trying to deal with Theo the Great, the kid who forgot how he
got the job in the first place. Within the next 24 to 72 hours, somebody is
going to blink. Within the next 24 to 72 hours, John Henry is going to step
in and end all of this one way or the other. If Epstein is truly willing to
pack and leave, then he can't lose. If he isn't, he may have to be reminded
by his father that things didn't end so well for Alexander the Great either.
He drank himself to death at 33, drunk as much on his own power as on the
fine taste of a good wine.
Ron Borges writes regularly for NBCSports.com and covers the NFL and boxing
for the Boston Globe.
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