The GRIFFEY DILEMMA

Sporting News, The, Dec 20, 1999 by Michael Knisley

The Astros went to the winter meetings last weekend hoping to make some big deals. But all they knew for sure at the end of Sunday was that nothing has happened, and Junior Griffey was clogging up the works.

He has Mike Hampton in play. He has Carl Everett. He has Derek Bell. He has three big-time players, there for the asking as long as the game-show rules are met, as long as the price is right, and it fills the holes in the Houston roster. And yet, as Friday's long hours vanish into Saturday's longer meetings, and as the prospect of Sunday's next round of endless phone calls looms in his near future, Gerry Hunsicker has nothing.

No deal.

It's Saturday evening, and baseball's winter meetings are lugging along, a tractor mired in mud, its wheels spinning with no forward progress to be made, at least not now, not here in the Astros' suite at the Anaheim Marriott. Hunsicker, the Houston general manager, has a trailer-full of talent to peddle, a passel of players he can't keep, can't afford in all probability, once their contracts expire at the end of the 2000 season.

The Astros don't have to make the deals right now; don't even have to be done tomorrow. But they have to be done, and they have to be done sometime before it's too late, before Hampton and Everett and Bell have the chance to walk away from Houston as free agents with the Astros getting nothing in return.

The trigger will be pulled, even if the gun eventually is aimed only in the direction of negotiating new contracts for Houston's free-agents-to-be. But every time Hunsicker's finger gets itchy, Junior Griffey's name pops up. And the action freezes.

Hunsicker isn't alone. On Saturday, Griffey, the game's best player or close to it, is out there, available, "in play," as baseball people like to say. And until he's off the market once and for all, he manipulates the options. For the Astros. For the Mets. For the Indians. Maybe for the Cardinals and the Braves. Most of those teams have other moves in the works. But other moves won't get made until the Big Move is done.

"Griffey controls this thing," Hunsicker says. "So Griffey first has to say, `I'm willing to go to this team.' I don't control it. But as I said before, you'd be crazy not to be interested. I still think it's a long shot for us to be able to pull something like this off. But, hey, I shocked the world once."

And he shocked it with a trade to the same team trying to move Griffey--the Mariners. That was Hunsicker's trade-deadline deal two seasons ago for Randy Johnson, the pitcher who was to finally put the Astros past the first round of the playoffs. (It didn't happen.)

Now, Hunsicker needs a shortstop. He needs a relief pitcher. He could use a catcher. And, like every other G.M. this side of the Braves' John Schuerholz and the Yankees' Brian Cashman, he could use a starter, especially if Scott Elarton doesn't bounce back from rotator-cuff surgery and Hampton prices himself into a higher tax payment the season after next.

So as Saturday afternoon fades to evening black last weekend in Anaheim, the frustration finds its way into Hunsicker's voice.

"I haven't just been sitting here eating popcorn. I've changed direction four or five times in the last 24 hours," he says, with an edge.

"You think you're heading toward a deal with this club," he says, again with the edge, "but later in the day it's off because somebody else has floated another idea and, `Hey, that makes sense, so let's hold off on this first one.' That's what's going on right now."

Now, late Saturday, the idea somebody else is floating is a blockbuster, and it undoes almost everything Hunsicker has been trying to do since baseball's general managers met five weeks ago to start this postseason swap-talk. Six hours earlier, the Reds put Griffey back in play when their G.M., Jim Bowden, stands before a congregation of media and says a eulogy over his dead efforts to pry Griffey from Seattle.

"No chance at all now," Bowden says. "Zero. It's behind us. There was no use continuing."

It changes everything. Just like that, whatever other ideas Hunsicker may have about Hampton, about Everett, about Bell, are shelved. Before any other deal is done, before any other club is contacted, Hunsicker has to muse about Griffey. And as soon as he thinks about Griffey, he knows it will take some combination of players the caliber of Hampton, Everett and Bell to get him. If he wants Griffey, he can't give Hampton to, say, the Mets.

"We have three players going into the last year of their contract," Hunsicker says, "And today, I can't sit here and tell you that we can keep any of them. I hope we can, but I can't say that. So the question is, if you get to the point--and now we're getting into some hypotheticals here--but if you determine that you can't sign Hampton, and you can't sign Everett, and maybe you don't want to sign Bell, then are better off going through the season with those guys and letting them walk at the end of the year? Or are you better off going with Griffey?