“We’re touching the opening of spring training, and you know how I am about spring-training distractions. That’s never a good thing. Never a good productive thing for everyone to be watching the door. From the first day on, I want everyone pulling from the same rope. … We asked for their bottom line, and obviously we underestimated on what the market is for him because we thought we were competitive with what the rumors were out there. With what we got back [Friday afternoon], unless Johnny sees this as a great opportunity for him, enjoys a chance to win in a great city, it’s an unrealistic number [that] we got back from them. … If circumstances change in the next 24 hours, I certainly will be willing to revisit it. Jermaine Dye cashed in big time for something like this, taking less money to win a championship, and maybe Johnny wants to do the same. … It’s the nature of the beast, but this has gone on long enough. We have a have a pretty good club as is. Would Johnny Damon add to it? He’s proven that. He was icing on the cake as far as we’re concerned. … If there is a silver lining here, from beginning to end, Scott and I had some pretty good dialogue. At the end of the day, it wasn’t a meeting of the minds, but it may lay the groundwork for future deals.’’
And:
Kenny: “the delicate part is what is a player’s value to team x vs. team y and in city x vs. city y. Some of it is real, some is manufactured.
