On Baseball: By Jayson Stark
The former Phillies headache is ``misunderstood,'' we're told. But let's review the facts.

Is this a new J.D. Drew? It's time for a little review

For one day this week, J.D. Drew dodged the Phillies in Busch Stadium the way he once dodged the Federal Express man. If timing is everything, let's hear it for the best-timed quadriceps pull of 1999.

But then, it turns out dodgeball is one of J.D.'s foremost talents. After all, he's spent his 10 months as a Cardinal dodging the truth.

We've heard him claim his little spat with the Phillies "wasn't about the money." We've heard about his heartfelt "principles" -- as if he were the second coming of the Dalai Lama. We've even heard he has "nothing against the Phillies" -- a sentiment that no doubt moves everyone in the organization to tears.

Well, sorry. That spin-doctoring can't snow those of us who watched him in action in the Non-Negotiation League. So as the great J.D. returned to action last night -- grounding into 3-6-3 double play as a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the seventh -- we examine the revisionist history that has been making us ill for months:

Myth No. 1: Poor J.D. has been "misunderstood." OK, we all agree Drew is a very talented player. But let's knock off the oft-repeated garbage that, in the words of one story we read this spring, he's "the most misunderstood player in baseball."

"What exactly was misunderstood?" wondered Tigers general manager Randy Smith. "He wanted a lot of money. That wasn't misunderstood. I thought his point was pretty clear."

Ah, but it's amazing what a guy can do with a Mr. Nice Guy act. Nowadays, Drew -- a quiet kid to begin with -- does exactly what he has been coached to do: i.e., act and talk like a choirboy. Incredibly, it has worked.

Yep, it must have been those vicious fans of Philadelphia and those nasty media vultures who made him out to be the poster boy for greed. Right. His teammates -- who have no choice but to rally around him, just the way Phillies players would have -- have painted him as a modest, respectful young man. In fact, in this very newspaper, Shawon Dunston even compared him to Scott Rolen.

Well, hold on. Rolen is a guy who wanted to help out his parents, so he signed for less than market value -- after he'd won a rookie-of-the-year award. J.D. held out for more than that -- after leading the league in nothing but grievances.

Guys who respect the game don't lie about their address, try to return their contract to the Federal Express office, spend more time in court than Johnnie Cochran or flee to the Northern League. They play. "He had opportunities to show people what high character really is," said Phillies general manager Ed Wade, bluntly. "But what he ended up doing was lead people to draw other conclusions."

Myth No. 2: Everyone has forgotten J.D.'s negotiating act now. Sure, life for J.D. may seem normal now. But lots of people, in and out of baseball, are still offended by his pay-me-now, I'll-earn-it-later routine. Not just in Philadelphia, either.

For instance, this winter, Smith said, he was asked, at a Tigers caravan stop, why his team passed on Drew in '97 before the Phillies drafted him. "I said we prefer guys who start out wanting to play and earn what they get," Smith said. "We want team players. . . . And we just got the feeling J.D. Drew's priority wasn't playing. It was something else. So we didn't want him."

What happened after that answer? "Biggest applause I got all winter," Smith reported.

Myth No. 3: The Phillies knew St. Louis would draft J.D. and give him the money, so they should have done it first. Oof. This might be the biggest fairy tale of all.

For one thing, the Phillies had strong indications that, if they couldn't sign Drew, Oakland planned to pick him and hard-line him. A's general manager Billy Beane confirms that, saying his club "wasn't afraid to fight the fight" and didn't decide against taking Drew until "the last 24 hours" before the '98 draft.

Beane won't say what changed his team's mind. But it appears the A's concluded just what the Phillies now feel in retrospect -- that Drew wanted no part of them. They also loved Michigan State lefthander Mark Mulder as much as Drew. So they figured: Why waste the No. 2 pick in the country? But that was not Oakland's thinking while the Phillies held Drew's rights.

An even bigger fallacy, though, is that the Phillies could have signed Drew for the same offer -- four years, $7 million -- that the Cardinals did.

"There was never a number below $11 million that was going to get him signed by us," Wade said. "For people to look at what he signed for with St. Louis and say we should have done the same thing, well, that option wasn't there."

Myth No. 4: J.D. got his money, so he must have been "right." Oh, J.D. looks smart now, all right. He got rich. He got to play with Mark McGwire. He's starting in the big leagues. So he was obviously right, and the Phillies were obviously wrong.

Sorry. It isn't that simple.

Was Drew "right" to pull that guess-my-address flimflam? Was he "right"to let his show-me-the-money agent, Scott Boras, concoct grievances around the most nitpicky loopholes in the book? Was J.D. "right" to manipulate the draft to suit his purposes, but not the Phillies'?

"What he did may have been right legally," said one of several front-office men who didn't want to be named. "But what's right ethically and what's right legally are two different things."

"I thought the image he portrayed," said another executive, "was exactly what we're trying to fight in baseball -- that players are money-hungry and greedy. This played right into that."

"Was he right because he made his money?" Smith mused. "He probably looks like he made more money up front. But he may have lost a lot of money in marketing. He's a tremendous talent. But he rubbed some people the wrong way, and that could hurt him long-term."

None of that, of course, helps the Phillies -- a team that can use all the tremendous talent it can get. But now, knowing how this turned out, it's easy to say they screwed this up. The fact is, says another general manager, "they did the right thing. Unfortunately, they took the bullet -- and nobody else was there to catch them when they fell."

copyright Philadelphia newspapers

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