Furcal eschews sentiment to sign with Dodgers

	Rafael Furcal is going to make the leap to the West Coast. Jamie Squire/SI
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DALLAS -- In the business of baseball, as in a lot of businesses, sentimentality is for suckers. And neither Rafael Furcal nor his agent, Paul Kinzer, has any chance of being labeled a sucker.

Major League Baseball's winter meetings got off to a rousing early start when Furcal, the Braves' shortstop for the past six seasons, agreed over the weekend to a three-year deal with the late-charging Dodgers for a staggering $39 million. The contract, which will become official after Furcal takes his physical in Los Angeles on Tuesday, makes the 28-year-old Furcal the second-highest paid shortstop in the game (in salary per year) behind the Yankees' Derek Jeter.

Furcal's decision to sign with the Dodgers was a stunning one on several fronts. First and foremost, Furcal reportedly turned his back on a near-$50 million, five-year contract from the Cubs and a lesser offer from his own team, the Braves. In doing so, the diminutive Dominican also kicked any sentiment out of the equation, saying "No" to some close friends in Chicago (including fellow countrymen Aramis Ramirez and Neifi Perez) and "Forget it" to father-figure Bobby Cox and many longtime friends and teammates in Atlanta.

"[The Dodgers] obviously felt like they needed to spend that kind of money to offset some of the benefits he would have enjoyed with us -- familiarity, team support and a manager he knows and admires," Braves general manager John Schuerholz told Travis Haney of Morris New Service. "Maybe they felt like they had to blow the doors off him, I'm surmising."

Clearly, they did.

"It was tough for him. It really was," Kinzer said on Sunday night. "He had agonized to get to the Braves and Cubs, trying to make the decision between those two."

Still, when the Dodgers threw themselves into the mix on Tuesday, just hours before Furcal was to choose between the Cubs and Braves, Furcal didn't hesitate. One of Furcal's representatives, Adam Katz, met with new Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti early in the week. By late in the week, Furcal had a one-on-one with owner Frank McCourt in L.A., dined with some of the McCourt family and, in effect, had been bowled over by everything from what the Dodgers had to say about the team's future (they're currently without a manager) to the money they were offering.

Furcal could have made somewhere around $10 million more by going to the Cubs. But the contract he is signing with the Dodgers is much richer, per year. If he stays relatively healthy, and if the game's salaries continue to climb, Furcal could be looking at a deal worth $15 million a year -- or more -- when he next comes up for free agency after the 2008 season.

"We felt comfortable, especially with the dollars," Kinzer said, in perhaps the biggest understatement of the winter. "Even with the Dodgers, we wanted a three-year out. He'll be 31 when this contract runs out. We feel like he's just hitting his prime."