Post by redsox04071318champs on Mar 7, 2021 23:12:30 GMT -5
Maybe yes and maybe no. You might have been spun yourself. I mentioned the cake story which may or may not be true but I didn't mention other things I read because it would be really inappropriate to mention it. Basically from what I read it angered Jean Yawkey enough to the point she wanted him gone.
Again it's speculation that may or may not stand up to scrutiny. Lyle might have crossed a line that she took as offensive. I wish to heck I could make my memory work as well as I wished it did.
Because I know this question came up at a SABR meeting where Dick O'Connell was the guest speaker not very long before he passed away. And I felt he gave an honest answer as much as he could and it hinted at reasons other than baseball (without being specific) as to why Cater was dealt. I just wish I could remember it more concretely. I'll facebook somebody else I know went to it and see if he remembers. I mean we're talking 20 plus years ago this talk happened.
It is true that Bill Lee is sure that the Sox offered him for Cater, and the Yankees insisted on Lyle.
BTW, now that I hear that O'Connell's story is 30 years after the events, it's very easy to create a version that includes all of these facts, and then some. O'Connell knows that Jean Yawkey hates Lyle and wishes he were gone. When the Yankees insist on him instead of Lee, he knows it may be an overpay, but it does satisfy Jean's wishes and it never hurts to be viewed favorably by ownership. IOW, it's not the rationale for the trade, it's the X factor that's the tipping point.
Half a year later when it's clear the trade was awful, O'Connell realizes that if he thought it was maybe an overpay, he should have asked for a minor league player of some interest. And now he's striking a deal to purchase exactly that, Mario Guerrero, from the Yankees. Maybe he even tells Lee McPhail that getting rid of a player disliked by ownership was part of his rationale, when he asks him if the Yankees are willing to pretend that the purchase is also a PTBNL for the Lyle trade. "I mean, you and I both know that I should have asked for one in the first place."
The transformation of the final deciding extra factor into the entire rationale is exactly the sort of thing the brain does in rewriting memories. O'Connell had this brutal two years (the year before including prematurely moving Rico Petrocelli to 3B in order to install the corpse of Luis Aparicio) but he had made one great move after another in building the '67 Sox. He appears to be the guy who hired Neil Mahoney as scouting director in 1961 (in his first stint at GM), and Mahoney was as good as you can get. He was GM through the end of '77. He thinks of himself as having been good at his job, because for the most part he was. It's natural for the brain to shape his memories to be consistent with that self-image.
BTW, there's a common thread to a bunch of his bad moves ... Aparicio was coming off a fluke great season, Harper was one year removed from one, and the key player in the Scott trade, Lew Krause, was coming off of one. That weakness, plus the general ignorance of the day, can explain all of his blunders, I bet.
I have the book, "The Wrong Stuff" which I have read multiple times and I do remember the part where Lee says that he was offered up in the deal for Cater and the Yankees, bless their hearts, turned it down and wanted Lyle instead.
So I know what you're referring to.
I don't know how privy even Lee was to the conversations O'Connell was having with his counterpart in New York.
Eric, I get you coming up with plausible explanations as to the baseball reasons the Sox were making these deals, and you may very well be right.
I don't know about the "revisionist" psychological theories you're putting forth.
I mean, sometimes, especially back then, it's not that hard to imagine trades being made just to get rid of people as opposed to for the best baseball reasons.
You can't tell me it was strictly for baseball reasons that the Sox dumped Billy C after he had that run-in with Yaz and Reggie Smith?
I mean, we can both agree on this - that the Sox dumped Bernie Carbo, traded Fergie Jenkins for John Poloni, and dealt Bill Lee for Stan Papi all for non-baseball reasons, correct?
It's not that hard for me to think based on what O'Connell himself hinted at (and wouldn't he know better than anybody else?), what others have hinted at, that there was a decision made to rid themselves of Lyle, and that if it had been, say Bill Lee for Danny Cater instead, that Lyle probably would have gone in a separate deal elsewhere. Also strange, that if the goal was to rid themselves of Bill Lee, they didn't seem too anxious to do it in the O'Connell era. As I'm sure you read in Bill Lee's book, he might not have had an extensive relationship with Tom Yawkey, but the relationship that he did have with him was a positive one, one that was rooted in their shared love of nature, so if he's right about that there doesn't seem to be an ownership mandate to get rid of Lee at that time.
Of course, when Lee told Haywood Sullivan that the desk he was leaving ashes on belonged to Mr. Yawkey and he was doing a good job of taking care of that desk, Sullivan obviously didn't take too kindly too it - by then Lee had protested the dumping of Bernie Carbo and had walked out, so his fate was sealed.
So the two things that I do remember from that meeting 20 years ago or so was the sense that O'Connell felted like he had no choice but to make the deal. The other thing I remember getting out of it was that there was an old boy's network in the front offices of other teams he dealt with, so there might have been a sense of one hand washing the other.
It's funny how I remember conveyances like that but I can't recall specific details, yet I can recite the details of the 10th inning of the 6th game of 1986 like it was yesterday.
My memory stretches back to the 1980 season so I remember Haywood Sullivan and his complete ineptitude on letting Fisk walk and trading Lynn for next to nothing (I remember the rumors that the Sox were supposed to get young OF Mike Marshall, Steve Howe or Joe Beckwith and Rudy Law, but instead wound up with Frank Tanana in transition and washed up Joe Rudi).
And I've certainly read the history of the team so I'm aware of all the drunken cronies the Sox had in positions of power and the ineptitude it caused, so Dick O'Connell's tenure is like a breath of fresh air, even with the mistakes. I think he was pretty damn shrewd for his time, and some of the worst deals were not of his desired making.
It's possible that after being light years behind Baltimore the Sox decided on the pitching and defense theme and overvalued guys like Ken Tatum, Luis Aparicio, Doug Griffin, Tommy Harper, and Marty Pattin. From a distant point of view Harper could still fly, and I think he did in 1973 with 54 SB or something like that - a team record that stood until Ellsbury broke it, so I can understand the thought that he could play CF and the idea of having two CFs and with Smith's rocket arm, that he could be a gold glove caliber RF. I remember it Bill Lee's book his opinion that Mike Andrews and Rico Petrocelli had no range and the thought was that between Griffin and Aparicio that they'd sacrifice offense for defense. I mean back then there was no sabermetric studies on that kind of trade-off.
Well, like you say, even despite the moves that didn't work out, he was pretty damn good at his job (and yes Neil Mahoney was excellent) and it sticks out when you compare what was before and the clown show that followed. O'Connell was ahead of his time or even with his time which is more than you could say about most Sox power decision makers until Theo arrived (to be fair Gorman had his good moments as did Duquette who pulled off the two biggest trade heists and had the most successful free agent signing).
One last thing - we talk about mysteries like did Mookie leave because he wanted to or the Sox refused to meet his asking price or give him an offer in the realm of what the Dodgers did? Why did the FO office sign off on Sale and Eovaldi if there was a mandate to get under the luxury tax is a mystery.
But another interesting one is the Rudi/Fingers signings. Some versions of that have Yawkey angry about those moves and as a reason to hasten the firing of O'Connell while other versions (and the one I believe) is that a dying Yawkey was only disappointed that they couldn't get Bando as well as Fingers and Rudi.
O'Connell was interesting. It's too bad he was part of Coup LeRoux. There was definitely a stench attached to that night.