``He explained how he'd felt left out to dry after the [Nomar] Garciaparra trade, how he felt increasingly isolated from much of the organization, how he felt that the team's obsession with generating more and more press coverage actually made it more difficult to focus on what he thought should be the team's primary goal: winning baseball games," Mnookin writes.
By that time, Mnookin writes, Henry was aware of President/CEO Lucchino's unhappiness at press criticism, specifically from ESPN analyst Peter Gammons, which Lucchino felt originated from within the organization.
``With Larry, there was the A-Rod stuff [the failed Alex Rodriguez trade, for which Lucchino was widely blamed] and the Gammons stuff, so you had this situation as far back as before we won the World Series where both [Epstein and Lucchino] felt the other was throwing him under the bus with the media, that they were out to get the other," Henry is quoted as saying. ``Until then, I never realized it, I didn't realize it was a big deal."
Henry then insisted that Lucchino and Epstein meet to resolve their differences, Mnookin says, but the meeting that took place three days later ``blew things up," according to Henry.
Still, Henry, who according to Mnookin did not know of Epstein's salary request until he read it in the newspaper, told Mnookin that ``we pretty much had a deal," the owners having agreed to Epstein's request for $1.5 million a year.
And Epstein, despite his ``bitterness" over leaks about the negotiations, ``was at peace" with his decision to return, until reading an Oct. 30 column in the Globe by Dan Shaughnessy, headlined `` Let's iron out some of this dirty laundry," that was critical of Epstein. Convinced that either Lucchino or his longtime lieutenant, Dr. Charles Steinberg, was the source of the column, Epstein e-mailed Henry with his intentions to resign the next day, according to the book.
``I have a huge pit in my stomach," Epstein wrote, ``but it's nowhere near as big a pit as I'd have if I'd already signed a contract."
