Just before agent Joe Bick began a conversation with Red Sox vice president of player personnel Ben Cherington Tuesday about a one-year contract for Kevin Youkilis, he asked a simple question: "Are we finished talking about a multiyear possibility?"
It had seemed that way at the end of December, when Bick told the Globe a long-term deal seemed out of the question this offseason. The sides had appeared too far apart, each thinking the other wasn't budging. Then Bick asked the question.
"If you want to talk about the possibility, I told him, I said, 'OK, as long as we agree to one thing,' " Bick said. " 'It's time to get into the heavy-duty part of a salary arbitration. Let's set a deadline on this that we have to get this done in the next 24 hours. We've talked about it a lot. If you're willing to do it and we're willing to do it, we can get it done in 24 hours.' "
It took 26. Bick had asked his question at 2 p.m. Tuesday. By 4 p.m. Wednesday, the framework was in place on a four-year, $41 million deal that could be worth as much as $53 million if the Red Sox pick up Youkilis's option for 2013. The contract was announced officially at a press conference yesterday at Fenway Park.
"There's no question that if either side had remained at the position we were in on Dec. 23 or 24, we wouldn't have gotten it done," said Bick, who added that the sides had started talking about a multiyear deal in the middle of November. "I think that it was just a matter of having conversation through the issues and it all happened very fast."
So for the second time this offseason, general manager Theo Epstein sat at a podium for a press conference to announce the signing of a player who had come up through the Red Sox system. Perhaps that was an instructive moment for the 12 minor leaguers in Boston for the last two weeks attending the Rookie Development Program.
And that's not only because the rookies have repeatedly been told to hold up Dustin Pedroia and Youkilis as examples on the field and developmentally.
Contractually, too. First, it was Pedroia in December. This time, it was Youkilis, who will earn a $1 million signing bonus along with $6 million for 2009, $10 million for 2010, and $12 million for 2011 and 2012.
"We've made no secret about our priorities here, that we want to develop a home-grown core of tal ent," Epstein said. "We feel like that's the best way, the only way, to achieve sustainable success year in and year out. I think we've made a lot of progress in that regard. It's hard to keep preaching that message if the only players you give money to are players that you bring in from outside the organization.
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