Red Sox prove they're only human
Posted: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 10:46 AM
The next time you want to call baseball players greedy jerks who think of no one but themselves, consider what the Boston Red Sox are doing for their coaches and the team’s support personnel.
This morning, the Red Sox found out that Major League Baseball will not pay a promised stipend to coaches, trainers and support staff during a trip to Japan. They held a meeting this morning in Florida, where they are supposed to play the Blue Jays in an exhibition game before climbing on a charter for the 19-day trip to Japan. They voted unanimously to refuse to board the plane unless baseball delivers on its promise.
“We’re getting paid regardless. It has nothing to do with the players,” Jason Varitek told reporters a short time ago in an on-field interview on the field. The coaches and other support personnel spend more time at the ballpark than the players do, he said, and they’re vital to the team’s success.
“They’re part of our unit,” he said. “It’s not just players. They’re the basis of what takes care of us. They expend more hours to going on the field than we do. They’re a part of it.”
Red Sox manager Terry Francona is reportedly livid at what happened. He personally told his coaches that they would be getting a stipend as compensation for the 19 days they are scheduled to be away from their families in Japan.
The stipend has been reported to be $40,000, (ESPN has been saying $30,000.) which is equal to about 40 percent of a coach’s salary. That’s a substantial sum, and even allowing for the weakness of the dollar, it will buy a lot of sushi and Kobe beef with more than a bit left over.
But the amount of money isn’t the issue; a promise is. And you have to admire the players for having the guts standing up for the people who make it possible for them to play the game.
They’re the only ones with the power to make baseball stand up for what they and the support staff say baseball agreed to. The coaches can’t threaten not to go; they’d be fired first. And Francona is management. All he can do is complain. But if the players don’t go, it’s a deal-breaker.
And baseball has a lot riding on this. The trip includes exhibition games with Japanese teams and the opening series of the season between the A’s and Sox. Baseball can’t afford to kill the series, not with Japanese fans eager to see Daisuke Matsuzaka, the former Japanese star, start the season for the World Series champs, and also to see reliever Hideki Okajima in a major league game.
As I write this, the Red Sox are supposed to be playing the A’s in Florida in Boston’s final exhibition game in this country before the charter to Japan is scheduled to leave. But there’s no game, not yet. Player reps and team officials are on the phones with MLB in New York while the other players are either sitting in their dugouts or cruising the railings and signing autographs for the fans.
You figure somebody will come through with the money and the trip will go on. Baseball really doesn’t have an alternative, and the cost of paying the coaches and support staff has got to be cheaper than the cost of canceled games, returned tickets and whatever law suits canceling the trip are sure to spawn.
Not all of the players wanted to go to Japan, and the vote to take on the trip was not unanimous. Since they agreed to go, they say, baseball has changed a lot of things that they supposedly agreed to. The players haven’t complained publically about the other changes, but they drew the line at what they see as an injustice to the game’s unsung grunts, the guys who make it all possible.
It is about the money, but not their money. For the players, it’s about principle and about their baseball family. So criticize these guys all you want for anything you want, but don’t ever say again that it’s only about them. They’re human. They have hearts.
