Under the terms of the deal as reported by the Associated Press, in which the Yankees sent second baseman Alfonso Soriano to Texas (plus another player believed to be a minor league pitcher), the Rangers agreed to assume $67 million of the $179 million left on Rodriguez's contract. The Rangers never made a similar proposal to the Sox, because they had agreed to take on Manny Ramirez and the roughly $100 million left over the final five years of his contract.
On the contrary, the Rangers first asked the Sox for $25 million -- $5 million a year for five years -- toward Ramirez's contract, a demand they dropped to $15 million in the final stages of the negotiations. In the end, Rodriguez and Hicks worked out a private agreement in which Rodriguez would pay Hicks $15 million for his freedom, with Hicks dropping his demand for that cash from the Sox -- as long as they assumed the full amount of Rodriguez's contract.
The Sox refused, even though Rodriguez signaled to the Sox a willingness to revisit his contract after four years, when he had the right to become a free agent. Rodriguez indicated to the Sox, according to a source with first-hand knowledge of the negotiations, that if they weren't winning and making money, he would be willing to take a cut in pay after four years. If the converse were true, the source said, then Rodriguez would have expected the Sox to bump up his contract.
But the Sox, who attempted to reduce the value of Rodriguez's contract by an average of $4 million a year but were rebuffed by the players' union, decided that the deal could not work for them financially. That came as a disappointment to Selig, who had worked behind the scenes in an effort to make the deal happen because he viewed it as a positive for all parties involved -- for Rodriguez, because he told the commissioner he wanted it; for Hicks, who according to industry sources needed financial relief; and for the Sox, who in Rodriguez would be acquiring a dynamic face for the franchise as well as a marquee player who potentially could give them the upper hand on the Yankees.
