Trading Time

When he hung up the phone he knew the sun was setting on his tenure as the Dodger GM and he needed something big to save his job. The job itself had lost its luster with the constant 2^nd guessing by everyone in this town. He wasn’t so much trying to save this job but his future. If he ever wanted to be a GM again he was going to have to win, and win now.

This trade could be the trick but he’d have to get Franks approval and he hated going into that boardroom with everyone shooting down his trades. It was hard enough hearing the snicker in the voice of the other GM’s when he was trying to make a deal. They knew nothing stopped with him, and they also knew it was likely that any trade he took to Frank was going to get shot down. It had gotten to the point where one GM asked him point black to check with Logan White to make sure they weren’t wasting their time.

Frank was hard enough to deal with these days;  with his infatuation with everything Logan White, but it was Jamie who had become bitter over the money he had spent that he had the biggest problems with. The last time he tried to get Frank to make the deal for CC, she had just laid into him. The boardroom with Frank, Jamie, Logan, and Kim had been testy with each side giving their opinions on the merits of the deal. Finally when all was said and done, it was apparent that no consensus was going to happen, he had put his hands on the table and asked Frank as his GM to trust him. For a moment it looked like he would get what he wanted  but just before Frank could speak, Jamie spat out “trust you? Like we trusted you about Jason Schmidt? Like we trusted you about Andruw Jones? Like we trusted you about Rafael Fural? Do you have any idea how much money you have wasted with the trust we gave you? All you have done is bring us broken ballplayers. The only decision you ever made that hasn’t been a huge albatross on our bottom line was bringing in that hard working speedy outfielder that Joey loves so much”.

That was hard to take, but she wasn’t done. Then in front of everyone she had to remind him that if she had, had her way Kim would be the GM and I’d still be getting Saben’s coffee. Kim was embarrassed, she was a good kid in an awkward situation who would never get the chance he had gotten. Jamie's stinging rebuke had hurt but she didn't understand the baseball landscape so he could let those arrows fall to wayside but he could see that her words had an impact on Frank. They asked everyone to leave while they considered the proposal. He knew at that point it wasn't going to happen.  Sure enough, several hours later Frank called and said that after consideration he had decided not to make the deal. CC was not going to be wearing Dodger Blue. Cleveland had given him everything he asked for and now he had to tell them no deal. He was crestfallen, he had already seen the headlines in the morning paper, declaring him a savior for bringing CC to the Dodgers. He felt they would have made him out to be the next Mitch Kupchak. Now he had nothing.

He wasn't upset that Logan or Kim were  after his job, that is what happens in a business where you only get a chance when someone fails. Without expansion and growth to provide jobs the finite number of GM positions makes for strange bedfellows in the front office.  Kim thought she had a chance because Jamie loved the idea of a female GM, but not even Frank would be stupid enough to put a skirt in charge of an organization of men. Frank didn’t understand that Logan was only looking out for his own shirt and couldn’t care less about how these deals would help them win now. It was to Logan's benefit if the Dodgers didn’t win. He would get blamed and everyone knew Logan was the next in line.

He sighed, but he knew he was going to have to go into that boardroom to make one more attempt to fix this team. Everyone is worried about trading the future but they needed to win now and this trade should do it. He had worked hard on this deal, but these were players that  knew how to win even if the stats didn’t back it up. They had been through the wars and had the scars to prove it. These weren’t kids who were going to fold when the going got tough but veterans who did what it took to win, even if that meant taking one for the team.

He hated to deal some of these kids but they had just not progressed as quickly as he needed. Maybe in time they would meet their promise but for now, for this team, he needed more. He opened the door and walked in…