8602270723
DETROIT FREE PRESS
861214
Sunday, December 14, 1986
STATE EDITION
1D
Photo Detroit Free Press
MITCH ALBOM
SEE ALSO METRO FINAL EDITION
Copyright (c) 1986, Detroit Free Press
MORRIS TAKES ON BASEBALL
AND HIS POINT IS BECOMING THORN IN OWNERS' SIDE
He is making a point. You have to be blind to miss that. Here is Jack
Morris, maybe the top pitcher of the '80s, telling the baseball world smack in
the middle of its winter meetings that he is through with the Detroit Tigers,
his contract is up, and there are four teams now -- and only four teams --
that he wants to deal with, and knock, knock, he'll visit the first one, the
Minnesota Twins, on Tuesday morning, and they better have their pens ready.
Making a point? He might as well turn into a brick and hurl himself
through baseball's window. "Go ahead," he is saying, "ignore me now."
Beautiful. Jack Morris is taking on the whole damn game, all 26
major-league owners, putting the whispers of collusion right out there on the
place mat. Now we'll see what is what. Four teams. Yes or no. And don't think
every man who swings a bat or throws a ball for a living and every owner who
pays those men isn't watching to see how this all turns out.
"I think," Morris said, grinning, "I surprised a few people, huh?"
He was sitting at a table inside a Bloomfield restaurant, eating fish,
even as his agent, Dick Moss, was on the phone arranging meeting No. 1 with
the Twins. The Tigers had dragged their feet on re-signing Morris, and he
knew it, because hey, you can't use the same trick over and over. "We all
watched what happened to Kirk Gibson last year," Morris said. "That's where
everything I'm doing now began."
Morris had no intention of waiting "until 10 o'clock Jan. 8" (two hours
before deadline) to sign. So he walked. The Tigers can go home now. Morris is
heading straight for the mountain to see if he can move it.
"Three options," he said, putting down his fork to explain. "We're going
to present the Twins three options (essentially different lengths and values
of contracts) and believe me, they're not ridiculous options. And they're not
going get to think about it for 24 hours. We're saying this is it, now,
period. I'm ready to sign. If you're not, we go to team No. 2."
"And if team two says no?" he was asked.
"We go to team three," he said.
"And if none agree?"
"Then," he said, raising his eyebrows, "we have another case, don't we?"
He was talking about collusion, owners talking to each other,
collectively deciding a player's fate. He was talking about something illegal,
a firecracker on top of a time bomb, a lawsuit that cuts the very flesh of
free enterprise. It was something the players raised last season when,
suddenly, not a single big name free agent -- most notably Gibson -- was
offered a contract by an outside club, even those that used to all but
deliver the money to a player's hotel room.
"Nothing came of that lawsuit," Morris was reminded.
He grinned, but his lips were tight.
"Not yet," he said.
Know who you're dealing with here, baseball. Jack Morris is not the type
to crawl into a hole. On the mound, when he is cooking, he is overpowering.
And off the mound, he speaks in fastball. When the Tigers slumped this
season, Morris -- who wound up winning 21 games -- was the only one to openly
accuse certain teammates of slacking. Later, he took to walking through the
dugout, swinging a bat and chanting, "National League, National League . . .
" a less-than-subtle suggestion that he could end up there by next April.
"Right is right," Morris is fond of saying. When Detroit won the World
Series in 1984, the organization gave him a ring, as they did to all his
teammates, including relief pitcher Bill Scherrer. Only Scherrer -- who'd been
with the club just a few months -- soon discovered his was not as gem-studded
as the rest. He complained. The Tigers called him ungrateful. When Morris
found out, he took his own ring off his finger in support of Scherrer. He does
not wear it to this day.
Get the picture? This is a proud man, an excellent athlete, 31 years old,
who feels he has reached the peak of his bargaining power in a career where 35
is over the hill. He knows he is valuable. He doesn't want to be jerked around
by the Tigers. And he doesn't want the 25 other clubs not to deal with him out
of some unstated agreement.
And he is sure both things have happened.
Seattle called me a while back," he said, "and I can tell you Seattle
isn't any more interested in me than the man in the moon. In my opinion, they
called to find out what I wanted, so they could tell the Tigers what I
wanted, Because I wasn't telling the Tigers what I wanted."
"You think the two teams are that connected?" he was asked.
"They're all connected," he answered.
A similar thing happened, he said, with the California Angels, who called
his agent a few weeks ago and wanted "a figure." Something they could say yes
or no to. The agent balked, saying there were other things to talk about as
well. "After that, they avoided us," Morris said. "We couldn't get in touch
with them for a solid week."
"Why would they do that?" he was asked.
"Because if they said no to that figure," Morris said, "then the whole
baseball world would know my demands, and therefore, they could group together
and make a decision how to handle it from there."
Call it a conspiracy. Call it paranoia. But Morris has made his move,
thrown down the gauntlet in front of everyone, and targeted his test markets
-- Minnesota, Philadelphia, New York and California. If one of the teams signs
him, fine. He gets the contract he wants, and he's broken the free-agency
stalemate.
And if no team signs him, the real trouble could begin.
"I cannot believe that will happen," Morris said. "But . . . who knows?"
They took away the fish and brought over some coffee. Morris took a sip. A
teenager sitting in the next booth got up to leave, leaned over, and said,
"Stay in Detroit, dude. We need you."
Morris laughed. "Dude?" he repeated.
He watched the kid walk out. "Hey, no, honestly, I appreciate when
someone says that. This is my home. I love Detroit. I'm pretty much 100
percent that I'm going to live here in the off-season.
"But my whole point in all of this is to have management treat players
differently than I've been treated in this town as of late. I don't think
I've been treated right."
"What's right?" he was asked.
"Well, the Tigers make policy without considering the individual. That's
one thing. I shouldn't be told, "Look at what happened to Rick Sutcliffe
after he signed his big contract.' I'm not him. I'm Jack Morris. I proved it
to them again and again and again! How many times do I have to prove it?"
His voice was rising, and he stopped until he could bring it back to
where he wanted it.
"The other thing is, their way of dealing. Completely ignoring me
personally. For instance, I had to find out a few days ago that I'm being
offered arbitration by reading the newspapers. The Tigers didn't contact me or
my agent."
He paused. "I don't think I should be treated that way, do you?"
He insisted he was not being a crybaby, that he did not hate the Tigers'
front office. he was just weary of their policies. His voice was steady and
sure, as if he'd said it to himself 1,000 times already.
"If the Twins made you an offer and the Tigers called and offered to
match it, would you give them a chance?" he was asked.
"No," he said flatly.
"What if they Tigers offered more?"
"No," he said. "It wouldn't happen anyway."
He has talked plenty with Lajoie, he said. The general manager actually
called him last week and asked him to come down to the office and they would
scream at each other and get everything off their chests. Morris refused.
"Wouldn't accomplish anything," he said.
He is done talking. The wait until Tuesday for Minnesota is only a
logistical one, he said, a chance to get all the parties in one place. If he
could, he'd be talking to them right not. "This is not a bluff," Morris
reiterated, and everyone who is close to him believes it -- his agent, his
wife, his friends on the Tigers, like shortstop Alan Trammel.
"Hey, I'll be honest with you," Morris said. "I'd like to find a way to
take Trammell with me. I'm serious. If they (the new team) wanted to take it
out of my contract, you know, take off $100,000 in order to get him, I'd
agree, no problem.
"I told Tram that, too. I promised him. He sent me a Christmas card
recently, him and his wife, and under where it was signed, 'Merry Christmas,
from the Trammells' he wrote, 'Remember your promise, Jack.' "
It's pretty hard to call that a bluff.
Think of it what you will, you have to admit the Morris move was a master
stroke. He and Moss timed the announcement to come during the winter meetings,
with all the baseball big shots gathered in one hotel. Heck, Moss held a press
conference right outside the media working room. The reporters didn't even
have to walk!
And that evening, back in Detroit, Morris got dressed up and went to the
Pistons game at the Silverdome -- by his own admission "the most visible spot
in town" -- so that the people and the press could easily spot him. Let
everyone know he was dead serious. Hey. You didn't think he was that big a
basketball fan, did you?
"Unfortunately," he said, shaking his head, "negotiations have become as
big a game as the damn game we play on the field. I don't think that's right."
But he's playing.
Of course, Morris' case is not without its holes. For one thing, he
doesn't want to be categorized with other big-contract failures, yet he
categorizes himself with big contract-getters (such as George Brett and Dan
Quisenberry of the Kansas City Royals). And the figures Morris would like (he
refused the Tigers' offer of $2.5 million for two years) may indeed not be in
line with what is being offered lately, and there is no law against a
marketplace lowering its prices.
But this isn't only about numbers. This is about the ability to offer
one's services to the most interested party, a privilege most of us enjoy in
our careers and simply take for granted. That is what has brought Detroit's
best pitcher to this juncture.
And there is something else. Losing. Morris despises it, and, when asked,
he admits he sees too much of it on the Tigers' horizon. "Don't get me
wrong," he said, "if I come back and pitch against them it won't be a
cakewalk. But face it. You lose me, you lose Lance (Parrish), you lose Dave
Collins. It's not the same team. The face has changed. If they had signed
other free agents like Tim Raines and Andre Dawson you can bet I'd be signed
too. But I asked Bill Lajoie Thursday, 'What have you done to improve this
team?' "
"And what did he say?" Morris was asked.
"He said I wasn't seeing it from their point of view."
Morris finished his coffee and got ready to go. Once again, he was asked
about any last-ditch hopes for the Tigers, and once again he said no, that
such a concession would defeat everything he was hoping to accomplish for his
teammates and his game.
"It sound like you're trying to teach the Tigers a lesson," it was
suggested.
"Yeah," he said, after a moment. "I guess I am."
So there it is. A terribly good pitcher, who is tired of waiting, shops
his services this week and finds out if the market is truly free. A simple
equation. A yet-to-be-seen conclusion.
But light no candles for Jack Morris. He is not dying, and he is not
committing murder. He is doing the logical thing, what most of us would do
for ourselves if we stopped thinking like fans. He is making a point, and if
it stings, it stings.
Most points do.
CUTLINE:
Jack Morris isn't looking for a handout; he's looking for a way out.
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