While Japanese baseball fans slept, the future of Major League Baseball’s 2008 regular-season debut in the Tokyo Dome next week fell into jeopardy.
Boston Red Sox players voted unanimously this morning not to make the trip. The players are honked because MLB apparently went back on its promise to pay team coaches and support staff a $40,000 stipend.
The money – also paid to the players – is to compensate for the grueling pace and travel schedule surrounding the team’s trip to Japan where it will face Oakland in MLB’s season-opening series.
Sox third baseman Mike Lowell told The Boston Globe’s Jackie MacMullen that, ''They [MLB] promised us the moon and the stars, and then when we committed, they started pulling back. It's not just the coaches, it's the staff, the trainers, a lot of people are affected by this…. When we put it to a vote it was unanimous, we're all in agreement that we're not going to put up with this.''
The Globe reports that Red Sox Manager Terry Francona learned that Oakland’s coaching staff were not being paid. Francona thought it was unusual that one team's staff would be paid and the other not. So he checked and found he and his coaches were getting nothing.
The Red Sox are scheduled to leave Fort Myers after today’s 12:05 p.m. Grapefruit League tilt against the Blue Jays.
David Ortiz told MacMullen, "It's really f***ed up."
The Sox are/were scheduled to face the Oakland in season-opening games in Tokyo on March 25 and 26.
Prominent on the World Series champs are Japanese pitchers Daisuke Matsuzaka (above, right) Hideki Okajima. Matsuzaka is slated to pitch opening day again the A's.
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