If They Didn’t Want Manny, It Was a Great Way to Not Get Him!
February 26th, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized — Negotiation AuthorYou have to hand it to the Dodgers management. If they were prize fighters on the take, their nosedive would have looked just like a knockout. Not a trace of artifice, a genuine effort to walk away with the title.
If they lost on points, maybe one judge in three would have marked the scorecard for the brass in blue.
No one could say they didn’t try.
Heck, offering $45 million for two years is a lot of change.
But then, nearly as fast, they snatched the dough off the bargaining table. They decided they didn’t like the way Manny Ramirez’s representative was going about his business; that was the cover story.
Dodgers offered first, and they expected a counteroffer. It didn’t come in a timely way, so the team said, “Forget you!” or, so we’re left to infer.
But if we were just a little more Machiavellian in our analysis, we’d consider the possibility that the Dodgers made a take it or leave it offer on purpose.
They didn’t want to keep Manny, but the only way they could keep the good will of his fans while selling enough season tickets was by seeming to want him. $45 million doesn’t look like a sham-offer, and frankly it isn’t, unless you’re banking on a knee-jerk rejection of it.
Negotiation literature is rife with examples of gurus that advise us to never, ever accept a first offer, even if that initial deal looks too good to be true. Maybe the Dodgers were expecting agent Boras to be predictable, to shun their overture.
The question might never have been, “How do we get Manny?” but instead, “How do we NOT get Manny, but do it without reproach, seeming to be the good guys in all of this?”
What the Dodgers probably never contemplated, smart as they are, is that the market for Manny would dry-up faster than super-glue. If Alan Greenspan didn’t foresee the collapse of nearly everything economic, how could the bright lights in Chavez Ravine catch-on?
Had they been outbid, they would have saved face, faster.
Perhaps the most straightforward narrative of this entire negotiation was accurately portrayed by Manny himself, as he reportedly told his pal, Albert Pujols:
“Nobody wants to sign me!”
That’s a possibility, of course.
But collusion, or a spontaneous meeting of the minds of that magnitude among major league baseball’s ownership, is something too Machiavellian for this article to consider.
Dr. Gary S. Goodman is a top speaker, sales, customer service and negotiation trainer, a TV and radio commentator and the best-selling author of 12 books, including SIX-FIGURE CONSULTING: HOW TO HAVE A GREAT SECOND CAREER. He conducts seminars and convention presentations around the world and can be reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com
His original class, “Best Practices in Negotiation,” is offered at UCLA Extension and at a number of other fine universities and organizations.
