Money Makes The Player Go

To me, the best time of the year is when we're negotiating salaries with our ballplayers. Just on the face of it, you'd think I'd be miserable, arguing and cajoling and disagreeing with the guys I like the best in the world, but I like to argue and cajole and disagree, and so do most of my ballplayers. They bring their competitive spirit right up to my office, and sometimes you can hear us all over town screaming and shouting about money. As far as I'm concerned, anything goes at salary time. It's just like love and war. I honestly don't think I'd hold it against a ballplayer if he pulled a knife on me and ordered me to sign him up at a higher figure. He knows I'd pull my own knife the next year, and we'd both wind up laughing about it later. We always do.

What the players don't seem to know is that I've got the whole budget worked out in advance, and I know almost to the penny what each player is going to get. I don't say I'm completely inflexible, but I figure a budget is a budget and when you start changing it all the time you have no budget. That's one of the things that annoyed me about the book that Ed Linn wrote with Sandy Koufax . They wrote something to the effect that a budget is merely a set of figures arrived at by administrative decision, and one administrative decision can be changed by another. Maybe so, but then don't call it a budget. I mean, if you say to yourself that you're going to live on a budget of $100 a week and then you go out and spend $200, do you still have a budget? And if you change your $100 budget to a $200 budget and then go out and spend $300, do you have a budget then? Sandy knows better than that.

Before salary-and-negotiation time comes around each year, I lay out a budget, x number of dollars, and that's it. I put down a figure for every ballplayer, and that's what the ballplayer is going to get nine times out of 10. Then the fun begins: they come storming into my office with all their tricks and stratagems and facts and statistics ("Last year, Buzzie, my average wasn't so high, but you'll see right here in black and white that I led the club in sacrifice flies and putouts"). Before they even start the sales pitch I know what they're worth and what we're going to give them. Sometimes the amount I've penciled in is more than the player asks for, and if you think I'm kidding, ask Ron Hunt . When we got him from the Mets this year he came in with a salary demand, and I told him it was lower than my budget called for and we'd have to pay him more, whether he liked it or not. Sometimes when all the negotiating is over, I find out that I have not used up my entire budget. Now, according to some people, I guess what I should do at that point is make another administrative decision and reduce the budget. But as a rule I don't. I add a little here and a little there till it comes out even. Ask John Roseboro . He got one of those raises last year.

In all my years with the big club, we've hardly had any holdout problem at all (although I must admit that when we finally did get one, it was a peach). In 15 years I have never had a ballplayer miss a single regular-season game because of a holdout. Of course, we had a few guys like Sandy Amoros who would almost automatically send in their contract late and show up late for spring training, although in his case I was never convinced it was anything more than a language problem. Amoros is Cuban, and he doesn't speak English too good. I'll never forget the time he arrived four days late at Dodgertown , and I had to fine him. The conversation went like this:

"You are four days late."

"Yes?"

"Yes. What is your excuse?"

"What?"

"Your excuse! Why were you late?"

"Late. Yes."