Time is running short for Mark Teixeira. If he doesn't sign a new contract by Christmas, he won't be able to buy his wife that small Caribbean country he promised her or bail out the automakers.
Pardon the sarcasm - which isn't directed personally at the young man at the focus of this year's biggest free-agent free-for-all - but the situation has been so blown out of proportion that it's impossible to know what to believe at this point.
Thursday night, news broke that Boston Red Sox owner John Henry and his management team were en route to Texas to meet face-to-face with Teixeira and agent Scott Boras, and everyone just naturally assumed the well-heeled Red Sox were ready to blow the rest of the bidders out of the auction. Four hours later, Henry sent an e-mail to several media outlets saying that - based on the size of the other bids - the Sox were no longer "a factor" in the four-way Teixeira negotiations.
Two days earlier, ESPN's Karl Ravech reported as breaking news that a source was saying Teixeira has "an enormous attraction to the Orioles" in the same 24-hour period that ESPN's Buster Olney quoted sources indicating the Orioles were all but out of the running and ESPN's Peter Gammons reported that the thing would probably come down to the Red Sox or Washington Nationals. The only one of the Teixeira suitors who wasn't prominent in that flurry of newsy speculation was the Los Angeles Angels, who might have emerged as the favorite after Thursday night's machinations.
Now, I have to admit this is great fun if you're a baseball blogger - and who isn't these days? - but I've noticed on my blog (bookmark The Schmuck Stops Here at baltimoresun.com/schmuckblog at your very next opportunity) that it has started to stress out a lot of baseball fans in the Baltimore area. This is a fairly provincial place, and the possibility of a Severna Park kid coming back to save the Orioles has generated a lot of passion and understandable frustration, not to mention more e-mail and blog comments than a normal human being can be expected to answer.
Tex has achieved a rare duality, becoming a symbol of all that could be right and all that is wrong with the Orioles franchise. Many fans see him as a Ripkenesque figure who will lift the team out of its 11-year malaise and accelerate Andy MacPhail's rebuilding program. Some are skeptical of the good effect of spending such a huge chunk of the payroll on one player, but that hasn't kept the vast majority of the team's most vocal followers from turning the Tex quest into a litmus test for the new front office.
