Selig has been hopeful Boston Red Sox president Larry Lucchino and a Cubs’ negotiating team headed by chairman Tom Ricketts and interim general manager Randy Bush can reach agreement.
But the sides remain at an impasse, with Lucchino reportedly not dropping his demand for top prospects as compensation for the man who will head the Cubs’ baseball operations.
“Larry needs somebody to tell him it’s OK to make a deal,” said a baseball executive closely following the negotiations. “He is in a tough position. He can see the Cubs winning the World Series in a few years and doesn’t want to be Harry Frazee, who sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees.”
GOODEN ’FESSES UP
Former Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden says in an interview that was scheduled to air on ESPN’s “E:60” on Wednesday night that he missed the ticker-tape parade celebrating New York’s World Series win in 1986 because he was using drugs.
Gooden, who says he became hooked on cocaine during the ’86 season, claims he watched the parade on television at the Long Island apartment of a drug dealer he did not even know. Gooden said at the time that he missed the parade celebration because he overslept.
The 1985 National League Cy Young Award winner says he was too high and paranoid to join his teammates for the parade up Broadway in Manhattan.
Gooden describes his first experience with cocaine as a 21-year-old star pitcher as “love at first sight, unfortunately.”
TORN ALLEGIANCES
St. Louis Rams wide receiver Mark Clayton grew up in Dallas just a short bicycle ride away from Rangers Ballpark
Clayton was at Busch Stadium for Game 1 of the World Series and was rooting for the team that played “literally right around the corner.”
“I like the Rangers, I do,” said Clayton, who said he’s also friends with several Cardinals. “I’ve always enjoyed going to the ballpark, it’s just what I grew up knowing.”
SHORT HOPS
Former Mets outfielder Lenny Dykstra has changed his plea from not guilty to no contest on charges of auto theft and providing a false financial statement. The 48-year-old faces up to four years in prison as part of a plea deal. Dykstra is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 20. … A 9-foot-tall bronze statue of Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson, who retired in 1977, will be unveiled this weekend outside Baltimore’s Camden Yards. … The Yankees declined a $4 million option on Damaso Marte, giving him a $250,000 buyout and making the injured left-hander eligible for free agency. Marte missed the last 11/2 seasons because of a torn labrum in his left shoulder and had surgery on Oct. 22 last year.
