What a long, strange negotiation it has been

Thanks for coming by the new “Taking Hacks with Haggs” blog…should be fun and things will be getting much bigger and better as we go along, but I wanted to get this up on the Web after watching it this morning. Read on.


Randy Hendricks, one-half of the brother duo that represents the Big Texan Roger Clemens, was on briefly with ESPN Radio’s Mike and Mike this morning, and had some interesting things to say about Boston’s negotiating style. Hendricks stopped just short of saying that the Sox front office “insulted” Clemens’ representation, but did characterize their reactionary offer as “strange” and seemingly chastised them for having regrets after the agent sought out a “no regrets” proposal from the Red Sox during last week's rendez-vous at Fenway Park. Make your own decision whether this is "after the fact" spin to keep the booing to a minimum after Fenway Park on June 1 when Clemens is set to toe the rubber against the Olde Towne Team, but it's interesting nontheless.

Randy Hendricks (Clemens agent)

How close did Roger get to becoming a Red Sox?
Hendricks: “Well I had already scheduled my trip to Fenway, so when Cash [Brian Cashman] sent me an email about the status of [negotiations] and we exchanged a few emails back and forth and ultimately I said ‘look I’m at Fenway Park and I’ll be back in Houston later this week’ so we emailed and said that we’d meet to talk in person on Thursday or Friday.”

If you could, between the money, the ability to do all the different things he gets including time with his family and things like that, the opportunity to win and location and everything else, can you take us through what you think made him ultimately decide to go with New York as the place to go [over Boston and Houston]?
Hendricks: I think you never underestimate the fact or feeling that you’re wanted. I told all three teams that he wanted to make a decision and come back around May 15 and that he was moving ahead with his schedule. The Astros and Red Sox said they wanted him to come back in late June or early July and their proposals were basically paycuts….the Astros said they hadn’t made a proposal but they did. The things about it is that he’s been in Houston for several years and if you go by what they said publicly then they hadn’t made an offer and to think about that, how long they’ve had him and they didn’t make an offer…that’s a very strange way to tell someone that you love them. They also want to win, and the reality is that in the Yankees situation it was very critical to their team and they wanted to move quickly. You just can’t ask somebody like Roger to get ready physically and mentally like he gets ready and then say to him ‘well now can you wait a month.” It just didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I told these teams to tell me what they’d like to do…I said ‘tell me what you’d like to do and tell me what you’d like to do with the knowledge that we’ll consider this and make a decision.’
I didn’t negotiation any offers with Boston and I didn’t negotiate an offer with Houston, the year before the only team I negotiated an offer with was Houston. I think everybody should have understood the parameters so when I say that Roger Clemens intends or prefers to come back in late May and the team says that we’d prefer to wait...think of that.
What they’re saying is that we don’t need you now and we’re not ready to move when you’re ready to move. I’m not going to say that it’s an insult, because it’s not an insult, but it’s a strange way to react to one of the greatest pitchers of all time.

Is that the reason he didn’t end up in Boston? If you look at Boston they seem to have the best team on paper and on the field and if winning was important to Roger then Boston would have seemed to be a pretty safe landing place for him. So is that what went wrong…the time schedules.
Hendricks: It was really more of the schedules because here’s the thing…you’re talking about winning being a variable, but it’s not the only variable. The timetables were a variable, the manager was a variable, there’s the players on the team [as a variable]. Let’s say we picked Boston, well then people would get on him and say you just picked Boston because it’s the best team and an easy ride to the World Series and you’re just looking for a cheap ride to get deep into the playoffs. If he takes New York people would say it’s about the money and if he chose Houston people would say that he doesn’t want to pitch in the AL East anymore because the NL is easy. I’ve heard all those arguments and they’re all arguments that people make to make a particular point. I told Boston to make a proposal with no regrets…make a no regrets proposal. So if they made a proposal and it wasn’t acceptable then they should have no regrets. I don’t understand the no regrets proposal that now seems to be full of regrets.

I’d be fascinated to know how much does he pay attention to or care about what people say?
Hendricks: I don’t want people to think he doesn’t care about his image or what people think because we’re all human beings, but the overriding thought would be like water off a duck’s back. It’s part of what makes him great. He doesn’t read a lot of what’s written because he realizes about half of it is going to very critical and it’s part of the process of the fans and the writers. He just focuses on the job that he has to do, and it’s part of his remarkable ability to keep concentration on what he needs to do and I have a lot of respect for that. I probably pay a lot more attention to it than he does to it, but I can’t do my job if I react to everything that people say. I have to focus on my job.