String Beane: "psychological issues"

Dusty Road: "we thought about Baker"

11.12.02: Larry Lucchino (with WEEI's Dale and Neumy)

On Beane Stalk:

We actually thought we were there, we uttered the words 'we have a deal' and we started working on comp. and Billy had second thoughts the following day. It's hard to be critical of someone whose second thoughts are based on such personal, and family, and psychological issues.

He was coming to a great city, a great region. But he's a California guy his whole life. Thought he had gotten past geographical issues, but he had not.

We started in early October, waited a few days after A's eliminated, and then JH made a call to SS to start the process, then I made a call to Mike Crowley, the president out there to follow up. And it was some time before we got a response, and when we did get a response, it was ambiguous. And so we continued to persist in hopes we would have a chance to speak to him... we heard the buzz that he was interested although we couldn't talk to him directly, we had heard that buzz, so we had to operate on at least more than one channel though we couldn' just sit around an wait, so we went out and looked at other possibilities, good faith efforts to id someone b/c we could never be sure Beane was available. Hire slowly, fire quickly as I said. And our current structure, P/T/E, we weren't missing beat. Signed Wake. One of first teams to sign a potential FA in Alan Embree.

Getting ready for GM meetings, Schott called, and assumed he was gone at that point.

Dale: Worried about others being second choice and Nixon, Fossum named in compensation.

No final agreement on compensation. Can't say we didn't want them. Oakland may have wanted them.

Happens in job searches all the time. Don't always get your first choice. Not a negative, he was Executive of the Year. We offered Billy a lot of freedom and mobility. Issues of autonomy were not really troublesome during these discussions. He was going to have the duties, responsibilities customarily held by the GM of a team, it was about a two minute conversation. The teamwork element of the baseball side of the operation, the Yankees good example. Brian Cashman is the QB of great evaluators. There's a team there. Most successful ones are a team approach. Believe me neither JH or I are going to substitute our judgment on the player evaluation side of the scale. I think that's a red herring and a false issue.

Player evaluations:

Theo Epstein, MP, LT, two of the same. Had mtg. in AZ to assign different people to themselves and they are proceeding a pace. Everybody is on our radar screen, people that you mentioned (Glavine, Clemens) not necessarily at the highest level on radar screen in part b/c of age and stage of career. Keep open possibility of signing FA or two. Minor league and major league free agents. Angels had 6 minor leage FA on their 25 man roster. Alan Embree never had to formerly file.

On the GM hunt:

Ron Hobson: I'm curious to know, do you revisit some of the people, where does the process stand now in finding a General Manager?

LL: Rob, we're letting the dust settle for a day or so, then we will go back to reviewing the people who were going to make it to the final round. We will also perhaps open it up to one or two additional people whose names have come up... have come forward... and we weren't focusing on them because, for the last week or so, trying to uh focus on, on Mr. Beane (a pause and slight breath through nose)... umhh, and I think that uh what will happen is that we will have a GM, as I said, by the time the winter meetings are scheduled when baseball really gets into high gear and that GM will have a tremendous amount of gratitude and appreciation for the work that Mike, Theo, and Lee are doing in preparation for that stage.

On Dusty:

"...we did think, you know, we did ruminate a little about Dusty Baker to be honest, because he's so exceptional... such an intriguing candidate that I can't deny that it didn't pass our lips, but the fact of the matter is that we were committed to Grady. It was a question of, if anyone of some stature with the respect that he has held comes up, you gotta think about it. It would be dishonest to say that the thought never entered your mind. We respect him. We like him. We didn't go after him because we were comfortable and satisfied at the end of the day that Grady was a guy who deserved a chance next year, and there was going to likely be some bidding war at the highest end of what a major league manager is paid, and to get to those $4-5 million a year, we thought a good bit of that money could be spent on the bullpen (help)"