Book excerpt: Barry Bonds, not Greg Maddux, was Braves' first choice in 1992
Excerpted with permission from Tales from the Atlanta Braves Dugout: A Collection of the Greatest Braves Stories Ever Told by Cory McCartney (Sports Publishing, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, 2016)
In the winter of 1992, Terry Pendleton was called into the trailer at the Braves' West Palm Beach facility that served as the makeshift office of general manager John Schuerholz. The reigning NL MVP walked in to find Cox there as well.
"What do you think of this?" the GM asked him.
The topic of conversation: Barry Bonds.
Excerpted with permission from Tales from the Atlanta Braves Dugout: A Collection of the Greatest Braves Stories Ever Told by Cory McCartney (Sports Publishing, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, 2016). CLICK IMAGE TO PURCHASE.
The Pirates' left fielder, and two-time MVP, was in the last season of his contract, and Schuerholz wanted to trade for him. But the GM had questions about Bonds's ego -- he would, in his Giants days, have four lockers and a leather recliner.
"That was his major concern," Pendleton said, "and I looked him dead in the eye and I said, 'John, let me worry about that.'"
I said, 'You go get him. If we can get him, go get him. I don't know how it's going to play out, but if you can go get him, go get him. I'll handle that. I'll worry about that. I'll take control of that. You don't have to worry about that.'"
Ultimately, Schuerholz believed that the culture Cox had built would win out.
"Bobby looked beyond that when we talked about Barry Bonds," Schuerholz said. "He just looked at him as a great talent.
"We believe and we always believed, he and I both, if there was someone like that who was more individualistic-centric than team-centric, then coming to his environment where this whole place is full of team-centric people and attitude and style, that it would win this person over."
Glavine heard the rumblings. He had moved to Atlanta full-time and was certain the Braves would be adding a once-in-a-generation bat to their lineup.
"I was much more in tune with the rumors and what people were talking about and I, like so many people, was convinced that we were going to get Barry," he said. "That's who we were going after. I know we were. To this day I know we were. I don't know what happened."
Over several days, Schuerholz negotiated with Pirates GM Ted Simmons, coming to an agreement over the phone on a package that would see reliever Alejandro Pena, out-fielder Keith Mitchell, and an undecided prospect go to Pittsburgh for Bonds.
Schuerholz informed his players, which created a sticky situation with Pena. The Pirates were adamant about wanting the pitcher, who had just signed as a free agent February 28. That meant the Braves needed his permission to include him in any deal, and Schuerholz had to get Pena to sign a form consenting to the trade. "He begrudgingly, but willingly finally, at the end, signed," Schuerholz said.
The GM went to bed thinking he had landed Bonds in a deal that, years later, would have looked like robbery. He went to his office the next day making preparations to announce the trade and called Simmons to go over the timing of their organizations' releases of the news.
One problem: The Pirates were backing out.
When manager Jim Leyland was informed of the return for Bonds, he went to team president Carl Barger's office and voiced his disapproval. He had no interest in playing the season without his best player, even if he was in a walk year.
"There was a lot of speculation in the media," Schuerholz said, "but there was much more work being done be-hind the scenes and undercover that nobody knew about, except Ted Simmons and myself, and eventually their owner and eventually their manager -- and eventually, the deal blew up."
Bonds was never aware of what could have been, telling the New York Times in 2006, when he was a little more than a year from passing Braves icon Hank Aaron for the all-time home run lead, "I [just] know Leyland stopped them from trading me."
With Glavine, Smoltz, and budding star Steve Avery already in their rotation, the Braves moved forward with a different plan.
"We immediately began to focus on the best free-agent pitcher in the marketplace," Schuerholz said. During the 1992 All-Star Game in San Diego, the Cubs wanted to meet with Maddux and his agent, Scott Boras. Contract negotiations with the free-agent-to-be stalled the previous December, and if Maddux had any thoughts of them picking back up, they were all but dashed in that July talk with Cubs GM Larry Himes.
"They told me I had never won 20 games or a Cy Young," Maddux told the Arlington Heights Daily Herald in 2012. "They basically told me I wasn't very good."
Never mind he'd already won 67 games the previous four years combined. Maddux would reach 20 wins that season and win a Cy Young.
If Himes's harsh words were a challenge -- one that Maddux met -- he didn't increase the team's bid by much. Offered a five-year deal for $27.5 million in July of 1991, the Cubs came back with a package believed to be between that initial offer and $30.5 million for five years.
Maddux rejected that deal. He marched into free agency, and nearly into pinstripes.
On the morning of December 2, 1992, Maddux called Boras, telling him he wanted to play for the Yankees. The agent proposed a five-year, $37.5 million contract, one that, if agreed upon, Maddux would sign immediately.
Less than two hours later, Schuerholz made his own play with a deal of more than $5 million per season. It piqued Maddux's interest, and he told his agent he'd no longer sign with the Yankees at the previous figures. A day later, the Braves came in with their offer: five years and $28 million. New York made its final play and was willing to give Maddux $34 million with a $9 million signing bonus.
At 6:30 that evening, Boras called the Yankees to tell them his client was headed to Atlanta.
The Yankees pushed hard for him, with GM Gene Michael, who was with Maddux with the Cubs in the early 1980s, traveling to Las Vegas to play golf with him. He even brought Maddux to New York, showed him potential neighborhoods, and took him to a Broadway show.
In the end, the lure of what the Braves had in place, and what Maddux could add to it, won out.
"The decision for me -- at the time, I was an NL player and there was an opportunity for me to go to Atlanta," Maddux said in 2014. "You've got to remember, this is 1992, too. The Braves were really good in 1991, 1992. And I had an opportunity to go there and my decision back then -- I wanted to stay in the NL and I wanted the chance to be a World Series winner.
"Back then, I kind of thought Atlanta would have fit both of those needs."
Landing Maddux more than worked out in their favor. In eleven seasons, he'd go 194â88 with a 2.63 ERA, three straight Cy Youngs, 10 consecutive Gold Gloves, and six All-Star appearances before going back to Chicago in 2004.
Still, the what-ifs are tantalizing, thinking about the 620 home runs, 417 doubles, and 1,543 RBIs that Bonds would deliver from 1992 until he retired in 2007 and having them happen as a Brave.
"We would have had the best hitter in the game," Schuerholz said. "We may have won as many in a different style, a different form, a different manner.
"We may have just overwhelmed people offensively if we had Barry Bonds in the middle of our lineup for ten years, for as long as we had Greg."
Follow Cory McCartney on Twitter @coryjmccartney and Facebook. His book, Tales from the Atlanta Braves Dugout: A Collection of the Greatest Braves Stories Ever Told, comes out April 12, 2016, and The Heisman Trophy: The Story of an American Icon and Its Winners will be released Nov. 1, 2016.
