Daily Archives: January 15, 2003

BASEBALL HASN’T BEEN BERY, BERY GOOD TO MINNIE

“What more could I ask of life? I came from nowhere. I worked in the sugar fields as a boy. It was a tough life. I had one pair of shoes and one pair of pants. But I always had a smile on my face. My mother and father…taught me to be a good citizen, a good human being, and to love life.” Minnie Minoso (from “Diamond Greats”, by Rich Wescott—appropriated from the New Historical Abstract

I didn’t know much about Minnie Minoso, so I dipped into my ‘lil baseball library to see what I could find. I also ran Minoso through Google.com and discovered not only are there books on Minoso’s career, but two that are written by Minoso himself (with some help of course): “Extra Innings: My Life in Baseball,” and “Just Call me Minnie: My Six Decades in Baseball.” That’s good news. I have some book hunting to do, which gives me at least one more thing to look forward to this coming baseball summer.

Here is what I dug up from my selection of books:

Sooner or later, whenever we talk about hitting, someone will ask me if there will be another .400 hitter in the major leagues. Of all the so-called “sluggers” in the big time today, the only one I can think of who really qualifies in all respects is Minnie Minoso.

Ted Williams, as told to Paul Gardner, Baseball Stars of 1955 (also appropriated from The New Historical Abstract by Bill James).

Bill James makes an argument for Minoso as a Hall of Famer in his book, “What Ever Happened to the Hall of Fame”:

My off-the-wall Hall of Fame favorite, if I have one, is Minnie Minoso. Minnie doesn’t seem to draw much support, but I’m not sure why. He’s a .300 hitter, give or take a couple of points, plus he had speed (led the league in stolen bases three times, triples three times), and some power (drove in a hundred runs four times; was one of oldest men to ever drive in a hundred runs). He was a good defensive player who played with tremendous enthusiasm, and was very popular while active.

What many people don’t recognize about Minoso is that although he has substantial Hall of Fame credentials as is, he is missing probably his best years due to his race. Minnie came along while the color line was still crumbling. His career inside organized ball started in the 1948 season; he was already 25. He hit .525 in eleven games at Dayton, which earned him a major league look at the start of the ’49 season, but when he went 3-for-16 they had no real track record by which to evaluate him, and sent him out. He had to go beat up the Pacific Coast League for two years to get back to the majors, by which time he was 28.

Most players’ best years are behind them by the age of 28. If you compare Minoso’s record from age 28 on to the records of the Hall of Fame left fielders from age 28 on, you realize how good Minnie was…

James then shows a chart ranking the 16 Hall of Fame left fielders in both Hits and RBI from the age 28 on. Only Musial, Yaz, Lou Brock and “Orator” Jim O’Rourke had more hits than Minoso, who is ahead of Ted Williams and Billy Williams and Pops Stargell and Goose Goslin. And only Musial, Yaz, Pops, and Teddy fuggin Ballgame had more RBI.

James continues:

Very few of the Hall of Fame left fielders can match what Minoso did in the same time frame…If Minoso had been white, he might well have gotten started early enough to get 3,000 hits. He needed 1,040 hits by age 27–fewer than Goslin or Manush or Medwick had collected.

James made some of the same points in the second edition of the Historical Abstract. Excuse the repetition:

Much of the argument that has been applied to Enos Slaughter, and with merit, could also be applied to Minnie Minoso. But for a very brief trail, he didn’t play in the major leagues until the age of twenty-eight, in large part because of his color—yet, since he played in the major leagues so long, few people think about the fact that his best years may have been behind him before he ever got a chance, and that his entire career was spent in what is ordinarily a player’s decline phase. His highest batting average, .326, was in his rookie year in 1951.

As a player, he was tightly similar to Slaughter, a fast, hustling, line-drive hitter with medium-range power. They were about the same size, both very popular players. Their batting and slugging averages are virtually identical (batting averages are .300 and .298, edge to Slaughter; slugging averages are .459 and .453 edge to Minoso. Carl Furillo is in the same group, at .299 and .458). Like Slaughter, Minoso played until he was well past forty, as a hustling, aggressive player of this quality often will. Then he went and played in the Mexican League for another ten years.

I ran an experiment with Minoso, reversing the Brock2 system to try to project what his career stats might have been had he been called up earlier. The Brock2 system is a complex method that attempts to project a player’s final career career statistics, given his performance up to a certain point in time. What I did in the case of Minoso was to try to plug into the formula a combination of accomplishments at an earlier age which would create the projection that the player would later do exactly what Minoso later did…The method estimates that, if he had come up at the age of twenty-two, Minnie Minoso’s career statistics would be those shown below:

Games R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB AVG.

2863 1970 3079 534 168 318 1429 1272 .309

If James made a case for Minoso as a Hall of Famer, Allen Barra asked, then why is he so ignored?

From his insightful but all too brief article, “Minnie Minoso: The New Latin Dynasty”:

The first dark-skinned Latin player, I was told by the hall of Fame, was Cuban-born Saturnino Orestes Arrieta Minoso, “The Cuban Comet,” better known to fans as Minnie. Minnie Minoso made his debut in 1949, two years after Jackie Robinson, playing for Bill Veeck’s Cleveland Indians. Larry Doby, who also made his debut in 1947, shortly after Jackie, is recognized as the AL’s first black players, but what about Minoso? What must it have been like for him, to be both black and Hispanic? There have been shelves full of material on Jackie Robinson, and in recent years baseball historians have started to catch up to Larry Doby, but who knows about Minnie Minoso? We rightfully mourn Jackie Robinson’s lost years, but Minnie Minoso was a year older than Jackie Robinson [Barra contends Minoso was 29, contrary to what James asserted].

How tough was it for Minoso? According to Jules Tygiel, in “Baseball’s Great Experiment”:

In 1950, Luke Easter’s first full season in the majors, pitchers hit him ten times, tying him for the league lead with Al Rosen, one of the few Jewish players in the majors. The following year rookie Minnie Minoso surpassed both Easter and Rosen. With less than a third of the season gone, Minoso had been struck ten times, and many were “deliberate beanballs.” At the season’s end he totaled sixteen, one less than the rookie record. At one point Minoso suggested that he could end the barrage with “a bucket of white paint.” Later in the season he complained, as depicted in a dialect by a Sporting News writer [before political correctness was a gleam in your mutha’s eye], “You get it so bad, I theenk I wear a headguard even in bed. Maybe somebody throw at me when I sleep too. I don’t know whatta kind of baseball this is. Yes, you try to get the man out. You brush back. But you not try to keel him.” During his first four seasons, pitchers hit Minoso 65 times, 8 in the head.

Here is Minnie Minoso himself from Danny Peary’s, “We Played the Game”:

In those first few years in the majors, some teams would call me names. Jimmy Dykes, the manager of Philadelphia, used to call me every name in the book—“you black nigger so-and-so.” One or two of his players would go along with him. After the game he’d come up to the hotel and say, “Hell, Mr. Minoso.” I was wondering how he could now be so polite…. No one on the New York Yankees ever called me a name, so I admired and respected everyone. Even Casey Stengel, who was a comedian, was a great sportsman. I was prepared for the racial insults from opposing players and fans in towns we visited. They went through one ear and out the other. Learned from my parents. The only way I’d answer is with a smile. They’d say “You black…” and I’d flash an insincere grin. Sometimes I’d insult them back in Spanish, warning them, “I can tell you worse things than you said to me, and I can tell you without you knowing what I said.”

“Minnie Minoso was one the funniest guys I was ever around,” Les Moss told Danny Peary, “When he thought an umpire made a bad call, he’d argue in half English and half Spanish and you wouldn’t know what the heck he was saying.”

In this regard, maybe Minoso had an emotional outlet that the American-born black players didn’t.
Allen Barra continues:

And what of that Rookie of the Year Award? Gil McDougald was a fine player, but in 1951 he hit .263 with 14 home runs and 63 RBI and 72 runs in 131 games; Minoso hit .326 with 10 home runs, 76 RBI, and 112 runs. He led the league in stolen bases with 31 (McDougald had 14) and triples with 14 (Gil had 4). His on-base [percentage] was .422 and his slugging average, .500; McDougald was, respectively, .396 and .488. Gil McDougald was a fine rookie; Minnie Minoso was an outstanding one. His 1951 season taught a lesson to Latin players for the next forty-odd years: you will have to do better than the non-Latin player just to be noticed, and far better to win an award.

James compares Minoso favorably against Enos Slaughter—apparently the ideal partner, and Larry Doby.

…Minnie Minoso never had a prime. At the same age when Minoso got a chance to play full time, twenty-nine, Larry Doby had only seven seasons left to play and would lead the league in just two important batting categories, home runs and RBI, both in 1954. At age twenty-nine, Enos Slaughter still had fourteen years of big league ball left but would never lead the league in an category but triples (1949). From age twenty-nine on, Minnie Minoso led the league in hits once, triples three times, total bases once, and stolen bases three times. From age twenty-nine on, Larry Doby never hit .300; from age twenty-nine on, Enos Slaughter hit .300 six times; and from age twenty-nine on, Minnie Minoso hit over .300 eight times.

If Larry Doby and Enos Slaughter deserve to be in Cooperstown, doesn’t Minne Minoso also deserve to be? And if Enos Slaughter was cut a little slack for his military service, and Larry Doby for the immense burden of being the league’s first black player, who about cutting Minnie Minoso a little for beginning his career at a point when most players are at the halfway mark?

[Minoso] remains the Invisible Hall of Famer, and in this respect his career set a pattern for Latin stars that have followed. Latin ballplayers, white, black, or of mixed parentage, are still baseball’s invisible men. Of the twenty players chosen to start the 2001 All Star game, eight were Latinos. If Pedro Martinez wasn’t injured, that would have been nine of twenty…If pressed to pick the single biggest difference between the game before 1950 and the game as it is played now, I’d have to cite the dominance of Latin players.

“Minnie is to Latin players what Jackie Robinson is to black players. He was the first Latin player to become what in today’s language is a ‘superstar,'” said Orlando Cepeda.

Now that the former players have something to say about the vote, you would hope that Cepeda, and Ted Williams were not alone in their acknowledgement of Minoso’s significance.

Personally, I can’t wait to read more about him. I’ll keep you posted when I do.

MEANWHILE, AT THE HALL OF JUSTICE

Part One

There are several good articles on the Veterans Committee which have been published recently that are worth investigating.

The first, “A Brief History of the Veterans Committee,” written by Neal Traven for Baseball Prospectus, is a concise overview, and a great place to start, especially for those who aren’t one hundred percent sure what the Veterans Committee is all about.

Tom Verducci from SI, also wrote an insightful piece, delineating the newly revamped Veterans Committee’s selection process:

Give the Hall of Fame credit. Its purpose for re-engineering the Veterans Committee was noble. It wanted to end the back-room cronyism and bring more voices into play. Now 84 members will vote: 58 Hall of Famers, 13 Frick Award winners (those in the broadcasters’ wing of the Hall), 11 Spink Award winners (from the writers’ wing) and two members of the old committee whose terms have not yet expired. A player must be named on at least 75 percent of the ballots to gain enshrinement. Great. But creating the ballot for the new committee proved troublesome.

First, the Hall, with help from Elias Sports Bureau, identified the more than 1,400 players who played at least 10 years in the big leagues, up to and including the 1981 season. A 10-person committee of writers and historians whittled that list to 200.

Next, a screening committee of 60 writers (two from each major league city with one team and four from those with two) was individually charged with voting for 25 players from that list of 200. I served on that committee, and it was the most difficult assignment I had all year…

Remember that cheesy promotion last season when fans were asked to vote for the 10 greatest moments in baseball history? The voting populace, many of whom used the Internet to cast their ballot, had no sense of history. Basically, if they didn’t see it on SportsCenter, people didn’t vote for it. That’s why Kirk Gibson’s home run made the top 10 and Bobby Thomson’s didn’t, among other short-sighted mistakes.

That same lack of perspective — or worse, was it laziness? — poisoned the screening committee results. Hey, with 200 names, the 25-slice pie could have been cut many ways. There is no “right” outcome. But we do know more historical balance was needed. To virtually disregard the first three-quarters of a century of baseball is wrong, if not shameful.

Moreover, the Hall of Fame asked six of its former players to serve as another sort of screening committee. They were charged with picking five players from the list of 200. Four of the five players they selected were on the writers’ ballot. Their fifth choice, while not identified, was added to the other 25, putting the ballot at 26.
And that’s how just about everybody who retired before 1950 got hosed. Of the 26 who made the final cut:

none retired prior to 1929.

only four played their entire careers before World War II.

19 played in the 1960s.

Now, falling through another crack, are those old-timers who don’t show up on the radar of the screening committee. And after this well-intentioned process, the fear is that they are gone for good.

Sadly, there aren’t many true veterans on either ballot for the Veterans Committee to consider. The Veterans Committee has been revamped all right. They ought to call it the Baby Boomer Committee now.

Marc Hugunin applied Bill James’ Kelter List to the group of twenty-six players up for consideration by the Veterans Committee over at Baseball Primer. For general reference, those questions are as follows:

1. Was he ever regarded as the best player in baseball? Did anybody, while he was active, ever suggest that he was the best player in baseball?

15. Did the player uphold the standards of sportsmanship and character that the Hall of Fame, in its written guidelines, instructs us to consider?

OK, those are the questions, here is Hugunin’s conclusion:

It has been suggested that questions #1 and 6 are the only ones that really matter in HoF voting. In the case of the veteran’s ballot, a clear “yes” cannot be said of any player in answer to these questions. So the hair-splitting of the rest of the Keltner List becomes more helpful here than with the BBWAA ballot.

So, taking all of the questions and answers into account, it seems clear that Santo, Allen, Minoso, Gordon, Boyer, Oliva, Pinson, Flood and Bonds are the best candidates on the veteran’s ballot. Each of these players can appeal to eight or more of the above to make their case, with Santo able to appeal to the most areas of analysis-ten.
On WS, Santo was arguably the best player in MLB in ’66 and ’67, at which time he was also the best player on his team and at his position. He played more than 2000 games and may be the best eligible player not in the HoF, overall and at his position. He had several MVP-type and many All-Star caliber seasons. If he was the best player on his team, it could at least contend for a pennant.

No other player on the veteran’s ballot can put quite so many items on the plus side of his case, though if you set aside Allen’s demerits on the so-called character issue he might even rank ahead of Santo. I don’t wish to debate the merits of the demerits, only to point out that they have surely hurt Allen’s historical ranking and may hurt him on this ballot. But if you set that aside, he is probably the top-rated player on the ballot on questions #2, 6 and 10.

Minoso probably benefits even more than Allen from this analysis, in the sense that everybody knows about Allen’s positives and negatives and has made up his mind. Minoso’s accomplishments have, in contrast, been somewhat forgotten. His late start diminishes his career numbers and the shadow of Ted Williams diminishes his peak. But he benefits the most from consideration of question #9, and scores highly on his MVP-type and All-Star type seasons and comps.

Gordon, having retired 50 years ago, also benefits from the close scrutiny of the Keltner List. He scores highly among second basemen, for his pennant race and post-season performances, and for his MVP season. Boyer scores well for his longtime leadership of the Cardinals team, including a team that won a World Championship. Oliva has the best comps and a good record in MVP voting.

Pinson’s comps are better than most, Flood stands out on defense and for his stand against the reserve clause, and Bonds at his position and for his then unusual power/speed combo.

Torre, Wills, Colavito, Lolich and Reynolds can make claims against several of the categories but lack a real high point to hang their hat on. Hodges ranks highly on certain elements but perhaps not enough of them.

On the other side of the coin, one could argue that the BBWAA has done its job correctly in determining that none of these 26 players is a HoFer. It is shocking how few of them were ever even the best player on his own team, and how few of them led his team to a pennant. Few of them could play beyond his prime, and their comps, as a whole, stink.

But I would hope that some combination of Santo, Allen, Minoso and Gordon is selected.

Part Two

I have no problem with Santo or Dick Allen going in, and I love Joe Gordon, so I’ve got no beef there either. I expect Marvin Miller, who is on the composite ballot, to be respected properly while he’s still around to experience it. The man seems bitter enough; let him enjoy his just due. No matter how much I’m fascinated by Curt Flood, I don’t know that I’d put him. Believe me if they ever did, I’d never be happier with a selection that I may have reservations about; even though he’s dead, Flood deserves all the public tribute and recognition that he can get.

But the more I’ve thought about it over the past couple of weeks, the more convinced I am that Minnie Minoso is a Hall of Famer. I had read Allen Barra’s profile on Minoso last summer in his collection, “Clearing the Bases,” and was duly impressed, both with Minoso’s talents as a player, and his importance as the first dark-skinned Latino to play in the major leagues. Barra asked a pertinent question: why is Minoso, the Jackie Robinson of Latin ballplayers not in the Hall of Fame? Especially when his numbers are comparable to say, Larry Doby.

My father has wondered out loud for years why Larry Doby has been so overlooked in comparison with Robinson? This is coming from a man who modestly asserts that he’s “second-to-none as a Jackie fan.” The point is not to take anything away from Robinson, but to note just how neglected Doby is in comparison. Being the first black player in the American League has to amount to something, no? But if Doby has been shortchanged in some way by coming in second to Robinson, then Minoso doesn’t place at all.

It just seems odd. Especially considering the socially-sensitive culture we live in. Where are the Latin protest groups? How come no one is fighting the good fight for Minnie Minoso? This seems particularly alarming when you consider how popular he was during his heyday in the 1950’s in Chicago with the Go-Go White Sox.

“There is a reason they call it the second city,” opined my old man.

Casting all aspersions aside, it’s a pretty big deal when the first black player in Chicago, an effusive, and personable star, has a remarkable career in many ways, only to be summarily dissed by the baseball establishment. I can’t figure why the media hasn’t picked up on it. The only thing I can guess is that perhaps Minoso is seen in retrospect as something of a clown. The old dude who kept coming back for a couple of at bats. Or maybe he’s not keen right now because he isn’t hard enough. There is no edge. And if no one is going to come out and straight up say Minoso was an Uncle Tom, maybe that’s what they are thinking. How cool is that? How tough is that. It’s a similar brand of scorn and neglect that greeted in some quarters as Louis Armstrong throughout his old age. I may be completely off, but I’m at a loss as to why there isn’t more support in the media and amongst baseball fans for Minoso.

GRAND OPENING

The Yankees held what is being called the biggest press conference in team history yesterday, to introduce their new left-fielder, who coincidentally is the most popular player in Japan, Hideki Matsui. John Harper writes today in the Daily News that the “press conference was…big…flowery,” and “reeking of self-congratulation.” Nothing suprising there.

Bob Raissman adds another piece in the News about the effects the Japanese media will have on the Yankees this season. He quotes Lou Pinella, who has had plenty of experience managing a Japanese phenom: “Let me put it this way, Joe’s going to earn his money this year,” Piniella said. “He’s going to have to spend more time dealing with the media.”

Joe Torre interrupted his vacation in Hawaii to attend the affair, and bristled at the recent criticisms Boss George laid on him, and his staff (Harper is one of the first local columnists to predict that Bronx Zoo-like craziness could be in store for Torre and his team this year; Jack Curry hinted as much in the Times yeserday too):

“My coaches work hard,” Torre snapped. “We’re all disappointed; I was disappointed. I was worried about Anaheim. We all knew they were good, that they could cause you problems because they don’t strike out.

“Even though when you’re wearing this uniform, you understand you’re expected to get to the World Series. But we won 103 games. If we were going to slack off, we’d have done it when we clinched the division. We just got beat.

“We didn’t stop working. Sure, I’m disappointed, but I don’t look back and say I’d have done something different.”

“My job is to put things together best I can,” Torresaid. “The eight starters – sure it’s nice to say use five of them and put three in the bullpen – but you’re not dealing with playing cards in the basement. You’re dealing with people.”

“I told (Weaver) last year when I put him in the bullpen that he was one of the future guys on this ballclub and that he’s going to be a starter,” Torre said. “But again, everybody can’t start.”

Hey Joe, never let em see ya sweat, babe.

COLON BLOCK PARTY

The Yankees may still have something to say about Montreal starter, Bartolo Colon after all. Here is an excerpt from the backpage cover story in today’s Daily News:

Sources told The Daily News yesterday that general manager Brian Cashman spent much of the day trying to negotiate a three-way deal with the Expos and either the Marlins or White Sox that would involve 20-game winner Bartolo Colon.

The primary motivation for the Yankees to make a deal is to keep Colon away from the Red Sox, who have been trying to make a deal for the Expos righthander.

In the deals under consideration, Colon would not end up in pinstripes but with the third team, Florida or Chicago, which would send the Yankees a top prospect. The Expos would get the Yanks’ Orlando Hernandez, but would have to pay only a portion of the $4 million-$5 million salary he is expected to be awarded in arbitration.

The Boston Globe confirmed the story, adding:

Meanwhile, the Sox’ hopes of landing a starting pitcher from Montreal – they were working on a multiteam deal that would have landed them Javier Vazquez – were dashed as Montreal was on the verge of sending ace Bartolo Colon to the White Sox in a three-team deal involving the Yankees. The Expos would also receive first baseman Jeff Liefer from the White Sox. Expos GM Omar Minaya did not return a phone call late last night seeking confirmation.

The Yankees planned to send righthander Orlando Hernandez to the Expos – and pay most, if not all, of his salary (he made $3.2 million last season and is arbitration eligible) – while receiving righthanded reliever Antonio Osuna from the White Sox, for whom he was 8-2 with a 3.86 ERA in 59 games. The White Sox apparently needed to move Osuna’s $2.4 million salary in order to clear enough payroll space to take on Colon’s $8.25 million salary. Ostensibly, Osuna would replace Ramiro Mendoza, who signed with the Sox as a free agent.

CLOSE BUT NO MILLAR? WHAT GIVES?

There are conflicting reports this morning regarding the Red Sox possible aquisition of former Florida Marlins first baseman, Kevin Millar.

According to the AP:

Former Marlins outfielder Kevin Millar intends to reject a waiver claim Tuesday by the Boston Red Sox, saying he will go through with plans to play in Japan this year.

Millar agreed last week to a $6.2 million, two-year contract with Chunichi of the Central League, a deal with a player option for 2005 that could make the agreement worth more than $10 million.

Florida put Millar on waivers to get him off the Marlins’ 40-man roster. Boston claimed him, but as a veteran player Millar had the right to reject the claim.

The Marlins issued a statement saying Millar’s agent, Sam Levinson, had informed them he was rejecting the claim and his client would play in Japan.

Levinson, reached late Tuesday night, confirmed Millar has an agreement with the Dragons and said he expects Boston’s claim to be rejected by the end of Wednesday

But in today’s Boston Globe, Bob Hohler and Gordon Edes are praising rookie GM Theo Epstein for pulling off “one of the shrewdest acquisitions in recent Red Sox lore”:

Theo Epstein yesterday defied tradition by claiming Kevin Millar off waivers from the Florida Marlins as a prelude to extricating him from his contract with Japan’s Chunichi Dragons and signing him to play first base at Fenway Park.

Millar, a career .296 hitter whom the Sox have long coveted, planned to reject the waiver claim, according to a source close to him. By doing that, Millar would become a free agent, severing his ties to the Marlins and leaving him encumbered only by the two-year, $6.2 million deal he signed last week with the Dragons after the Japanese team paid the Marlins $1.2 million for the right to negotiate with him.

The Sox would then compensate the Dragons to release Millar, according to a source familiar with how the scenario is expected to unfold. That would free Millar to sign with the Sox, which both sides expect to occur.

”We’re confident we can reach a resolution of this matter that will make all sides happy and leave everybody whole,” said Epstein, who declined to discuss details of the multilayered endeavor.

By claiming Millar off waivers after the Marlins sought his unconditional release, the Sox broke an informal code by which one team generally does not interfere with another club’s transaction with an overseas organization such as the Dragons. The Marlins were formerly owned by Sox principal owner John W. Henry.

”They broke a gentleman’s agreement,” a Marlins source said. ”This is [b.s]. Yeah, we’re [peeved].”

Epstein expressed a smidgeon of contrition.

”It was not our intention to violate any unwritten rule,” he said. ”We were simply putting our best foot forward.”

Officially, the Marlins released a statement that said they had conferred with Millar’s agent, Sam Levinson.

”Levinson has told the Marlins that Kevin Millar will reject the Red Sox claim and play for the Chunichi Dragons in 2003,” the Marlins said.

The statement was half-right, anyway, since Millar would reject the claim. But he made clear after he signed with the Dragons that he would have stayed in the major leagues for less money if he were given the opportunity. He lost that chance when the Marlins effectively sold him to Chunichi, of the Japanese Central League, clearing the way for the Dragons to sign him to the richest contract in the team’s history.

Millar, 31, earned $1.05 million from Florida last season, when he hit .306 with 16 homers and 57 RBIs. He was eligible for arbitration, in which he could have doubled his salary. But the Marlins, who used Millar mostly in the outfield, opted to acquire Todd Hollandsworth and Gerald Williams, making Millar expendable.

”If some major league team had offered me $1.5 million and told me I could play every day, I probably would have taken it,” he was quoted as saying after he signed with Chunichi in a deal that also included a $3 million option for a third season. ”But to walk away from that much money on the table in Japan, I don’t think it would have been responsible for my family.”

Enter the Sox, who tried in vain several times over the last year to obtain Millar in a trade. While the Sox seemed to have little hope in recent days of overcoming the thicket of major league rules and international legal entanglements to land the righthanded hitter, they quietly laid the groundwork for the surprise move by exploring the possibilities and apparently satisfying themselves that the Dragons and Millar would be open to their initiative.

”It’s something we haven’t done lightly,” Epstein said. ”We researched it so we could proceed without infringing on the rights of the Marlins, the Chunichi Dragons, or Kevin Millar. We were comfortable making the claim when we were confident there were several possible resolutions of this move and all of them would involve the teams being made whole and not ending up with less than what they started with.”

The Marlins, despite their anger over Epstein’s methods, ultimately should have no complaint over the financial fallout because they would not forfeit their payment from the Dragons. And the Sox could compensate the Dragons by giving them outfielder/first baseman Benny Agbayani, whose production is similar to Millar’s and who is popular in Japan both because of his Hawaiian roots and his appearance with the Mets in the 2000 World Series. The Dragons also would receive cash from the Sox, presumably at least the amount Chunichi paid the Marlins.

The Globe usually gets things right, so I assume Millar is in fact going to Beantown. I’ll update the story as it unfolds…