The first day of the baseball winter meetings came and went on Monday with nothing but more speculation about CC Sabathia to fill the Yankee heads. They had a second meeting with the pitcher and brought Reggie Jackson along to tell his fellow Northern Californian about how much fun it is to be a big star in New York. I'd imagine that neither one decided that wearing their World Series rings would be overkill. The word is that the meeting went well.
There's other word, however, that might make the Yankees a bit less giddy. Dodgers GM Ned Colletti said he ran into Sabathia in a hotel lobby on Sunday and the free agent told him that he'd like to play in Los Angeles. Rumor mill that these meetings are, this has to be true. Colletti would be done as a credible GM if he made it up. That prompted a heart attack for Cashman (presumably) and a strange comment from Colletti.
"It's a possibility," Colletti said. "It's an interesting dynamic with anybody who is long-term at a salary that's higher than most. When you're talking about a player who is long-term, it's going to change the dynamic of your team in some way."
The whole idea of signing a free agent, most would agree, is changing the dynamic of your team in some way, hopefully the positive way. Parsing further, however, it doesn't seem like Colletti is ready to open the purse strings to the Yankees level. Parsing even further, though, it's clear Sabathia isn't sold on playing in New York.
We don't know exactly what Jackson told him in the meeting, but it probably wasn't that people reviled him for most of 1977. That he was losing a PR battle to his manager and that he must have, at least once, regretted his choice to come to New York. He probably mentioned the love affair that followed the World Championship that season and the iconic place he now has in the team's history.
Jackson was dying to play for the Yankees. The biggest question with Sabathia is what effect his lukewarm interest in playing for the Yankees will have on a tenure with the team. New York is a fishbowl and there will be plenty of people, people who feel playing for the Yankees should be every player's dream, waiting with sharp knives if he struggles early.
That's for the future, though. The present is that a second meeting means that interest is growing, which means that we still may get to find out how it all plays out.
