Inside Story on Bay-Manny

Sports-Illustrated has a nifty story on the Manny trade saga.

Some highlights:

- Only the Phillies, Marlins, and Dodgers were major players in the negotiations, and no team was interested at all before the Sox Front Office agreed to kick in money to cover Manny's salary.

- The Marlins FO is greedy and insane:

Plus the Marlins wanted Boston to not only pay Ramirez's $7 million salary but also to ship them $2 million more to cover the draft choices they'd get when they let Ramirez leave as a free agent after the year. So in other words Florida wanted Boston to pay for three of its players for accepting the Cooperstown-bound Ramirez.

I can't imagine that Selig would sign off on such a deal. Subsidizing a player's salary is one thing - subsidizing their compensatory draft picks is quite another.

- The Sox sought Dodgers prospects including Matt Kemp, LaRoche, and Chin-Lung Hu. LA said no in each case.

- The 3-team deal was agreed upon at 3:59 pm on Friday. Theo sure loves to work down to the wire.

- Manny received a $1 million "roster bonus" for joining LA. As if getting out of Boston wasn't incentive enough.