"I'm Murray Chass and I approve this smear piece."

Boy, oh boy. The New York Times' Murray Chass is at it again. With the Red Sox' signing of J.D. Drew, Chass is starting to stir the pot a little bit by insinuating that the front office's dealings with Scott Boras over the newly acquired outfielder were less than kosher. According to Chass, a number of baseball officials have urged Dodgers general manager and baseball man extraordinaire (see: Pierre, Juan) Ned Colletti to file tampering charges against the Red Sox.

Exhibit A for the disgruntled is Boston’s signing of J. D. Drew, who walked away from the final three years of his contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, a move that his agent, Scott Boras, said was aboveboard and precipitated by the marketplace. The signing of Drew could lead to an investigation by the commissioner’s office into possible tampering by the Red Sox; one baseball official said the commissioner’s office would vigorously investigate the matter if it received a complaint, but added that no complaint has been forthcoming. [...]

One general manager said that many people at the general managers’ meeting, after hearing that Drew would sign with Boston, urged the Dodgers to file a tampering charge.

“We haven’t reached a decision yet,” Ned Colletti, the Dodgers’ general manager, said by telephone yesterday before leaving the winter meetings in Orlando, Fla.

(NY Times, December 8, 2006)

Whoa, you mean that J.D. Drew left the Dodgers because his agent, some guy named Scott Boras, might have thought that his client would make more money on a bloated market? Ludicrous, especially because Drew actually was able to find a more lucrative contract. There has to be something devious here.

Please. There were similar reports around the trading deadline that the Red Sox front office contacted the agent for Julio Lugo about playing in Boston. When a player's under contract, that's a no-no. The supposed retaliation by the Tampa Bay executives was to claim Adam Stern off waivers and slow down the final portions of the deal that sent Javy Lopez to Boston. Still, there was never any sort of confirmation of this purported behavior.

In my opinion, the absence of prosecution, both in the Lugo case and thus far in the Drew situation, indicates one of two things. Either, as I would like to believe, there was no tampering on the part of the Red Sox and they did everything by the books, or, there has been no prosecution of the Red Sox because legal action would lead to a more illuminating examination of every team's front office dealings. Consider it a white collar version of Dirtgate. If Colletti isn't sure he's going to press charges, then he's not going to press charges. It's not the kind of thing you just sit around on.

Nothing is ever as pure as we want it to be. Steroids aren't the only thing to have given ballplayers unfair advantages over the decades. We've all heard the stories about greenies and spitballs, scuffs and spikes. Any trip to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY will place a visitor smack dab in the middle of a group of carousers and alcoholics, racists and chauvinists. But still, we view the game with the sepia-toned ignorance that allows us to keep The Game on It's precarious pedestal, elevated high above the other American diversions. I'm guilty of it, you're guilty of it. It's never as clean as I pretend, and I know that, as I'm sure you, the educated reader, know as well. Chances are that tampering (in it's tamest form, of course) is all too common in the tight-knit group that is the collection of front offices.

Let he who is free of sin cast the first stone. Right, Ned?