Posts tagged ‘contracts’

Hope everyone is having a nice Thanksgiving weekend.  Beware of that weird pink jello stuff…it tends to survive well into December. Anyway, last night I stumbled across an awesome story written by Curt Schilling that details how he was traded from the D’Backs to the Red Sox back in ’03. He literally does a play-by-play of the negotiation and what the Red Sox did to exceed his expectations and ultimately get the deal done. Oh yeah, and he said that Chicago was on his short list of places he would have liked to play in ’04 and beyond.

No doubt this story has made the rounds in baseball, but for anybody interested in the inner workings of signings and trades, this is a 101 course on how not only to handle both a big signing and a big trade, but also how to build trust between team officials and players. Apparently it works.

According to one of my favorite sites, Cot’s Baseball Contracts, only a couple of Cubs players have the same kind of suite, ticket, and charity stipulations (Soriano and Fukudome) that Schilling said he wanted to hammer out first. For as much as Kosuke was originally called a Matsui-Ichiro hybrid, his contract is actually similar to Daisuke Matsuzaka’s deal with Boston. I’ll save the jokes about his hitting for another day…after all, it’s the holidays.

Kosuke’s contract shows that the Cubs are in the 21st century with their negotiation and signing tactics, which is great news. However, Hendry hasn’t swung the Schilling-esque World Series victory clause…yet. Though it takes a special kind of player to negotiate that.

A Kerry Wood, for instance. Hmm.

In any case, it’s good to know that a great player like Curt Schilling viewed beating the curse in Boston as an advantage to playing there. Five years after the events in Schilling’s story, the Cubs have a full market share in the overcoming history category.

By the way, Curt is a free agent this offseason. Go figure.