![]() According to a Sports Illustrated account, LeRoux and Sullivan personally pledged just $200,000 of the total $15 million bid (supported by 11 other partners). Neither LeRoux nor Sullivan possessed the kind of wealth necessary to bankroll a team. The Red Sox lured Sullivan out of college early with a $75,000 signing bonus, but despite a promising start, injuries limited his playing career. “He could fire the baseball, he could hit, and he could flat throw the football,” teammate Doug Dickey said of Sullivan. The future Red Sox executive only ended up in baseball because professional football lacked the financial resources to persuade him when he was a college athlete in the 1950s.Īs a highly touted recruit in both sports, Sullivan (a Georgia native) chose the University of Florida, where he excelled as a quarterback and a catcher. Sullivan’s origin in baseball was an encapsulation of the older era he’d emerged from. “If nuclear war were to break out, it would only make page two in Boston.” The journey to that calamitous point began decades earlier. The result was a compounding series of unforced errors that the Red Sox endured in publicly humiliating fashion during the 1980-1981 offseason. Still, the more definitive answer to the question lies in the relationship of Sullivan, who represented an older era of baseball (freely admitting in 1981 that “I liked the days when everyone had a good time around baseball”) with the inexorable trend towards increased player power. 22.įisk, as arbitrator Raymond Goetz declared on that fateful February day, would attain free agency, while Lynn had been hastily traded to the Angels before the ruling in January. 20 deadline as established by baseball’s Basic Agreement, as the contracts were instead mailed on Dec. The Red Sox failed to send Fisk and then-teammate Fred Lynn (the 1975 Rookie of the Year and American League MVP) their contracts by the Dec. The literal answer, unbelievable as it remains, was that a piece of mail had been sent two days late. When Fisk eventually signed with the White Sox a few weeks later in March on a five-year deal worth $2.9 million, New England’s nightmare was complete.īut how had it come to this? How had a player who had so perfectly symbolized the region - and who said that only a few months earlier he “never could have visualized” any scenario where he wasn’t on the Red Sox - suddenly been allowed to become a free agent and leave? “Open the damn bar,” he declared, inadvertently creating a soundbite Lobel would replay frequently. ![]() ![]() Yet just before he “ engaged in a shouting match” with Lobel over the nature of their television interview, he turned and delivered the only line with which Red Sox fans would’ve wholeheartedly concurred. Timing, as recent events had shown, was not his strength. Having stirred up reporters with his dramatic announcement, Sullivan bristled at what came next. But even as Sullivan told reporters that “we want to re-sign him very badly,” he couldn’t help but add - in terms that fans undoubtedly found ominous - “we want to keep some sanity here, and I won’t get caught in a slingshot.” That Fisk would leave was not yet a foregone conclusion. ![]() “We told them they would be treated like every other team,” said Fisk. When asked later that day by WBZ’s Bob Lobel if he had spoken with the Boston management, he gave a blunt answer. ![]() Though he had unequivocally said, “I don’t want to leave the Red Sox,” as recently as January, Fisk already appeared to have moved on. Whether anyone was ready for it or not, the 33-year-old was officially baseball’s latest free agent. This time it’s Fisk, and Fisk is one of us.” “We’ve suffered through things we said we’d never forgive them for,” a fan told the Boston Globe of Red Sox management while awaiting the decision. ![]()
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