A clause with claws

Players with no-trade contracts hold all the cards

On the long list of great perks baseball players pull down over the course of their careers -- a list that includes fame, fortune and all the free sunflower seeds a guy can spit -- the no-trade clause has to rank right near the top.

Think about it. These guys live a life that Brad Pitt dreams about, full of good-looking women and free meals and way fat paychecks. But until they get enough time in the bigs, they could be playing in San Diego or Seattle or San Francisco or Boston or some cool place like that one day, then hacking away in Milwaukee or Detroit or someplace like that the next. Until they get their 10 years in the league, five of them with the same team, and get the right to say where they'll play, they really never know what to pack. Or where to unpack.

Unless, that is, they can finagle their way into a no-trade clause in their contract. If they can do that … well, then they can spit anywhere they damn well please.

Juan Gonzalez has a no-trade in his contract with the Texas Rangers, and it's a beautiful thing. For him. That's because the Rangers, long on hitting, short on pitching and hefty of payroll, want to ship the slugger to Montreal.

Gonzalez spent a year in Detroit. And another in Cleveland. He freezes when he gets any place north of Dallas. He sure doesn't want to go to Montreal.

He may end up going there anyway, or he may not. The point is, it's his choice. When he signed with the Rangers before last season, he worked the no-trade clause into his contract. The Rangers bit. And now they're getting bit back.

No-trade clauses may be beautiful for players, but for the clubs who dole them out, they can be downright hideous. Players with no-trades veto deals all the time. Fred McGriff, Kenny Rogers, Matt Williams and Phil Nevin are just some players who have invoked the mighty clause in their contracts recently. David Wells has a no-trade in his contract with the Yankees. So does Randy Johnson with the Diamondbacks. Some teams hand them out like bobbleheads.

All the big names in the middle of the Philadelphia Phillies' lineup, for instance -- Jim Thome, Pat Burrell, Bobby Abreu -- have no-trade clauses in their contracts. Another Phillies player, catcher Mike Lieberthal, had one in his, though it became moot when he recently became a 10-5 man.

"Every club draws its own line in the sand," says Ed Wade, the Phillies' general manager. The Phillies decided that to get some guys they wanted, they'd have to fork over something. And since a gob of money just isn't enough for a lot of these guys, the no-trade came about.

The Atlanta Braves, on the flip side, never give no-trades. They never have. There's not one player on the Braves' roster who has a no-trade clause in his contract. GM John Schuerholz feels that his hands are tied enough, what with the 10-5 guys, the bookloads of rules that govern the trading of players and the general economic atmosphere in the game. He absolutely will not give into a demand for a no-trade clause. So hardly anyone asks him any more.

Plus, as Schuerholz points out, he pays these guys pretty well as it is.

Maybe the worst thing about no-trade clauses, as far as the teams are concerned, is that they always get in the way. San Diego's Nevin vetoed a trade to the Cincinnati Reds in the offseason that would have sent Reds centerfielder Ken Griffey Jr. to the Padres. Even though the deal never got off the ground, Griffey got his feelings hurt, and the Reds had to go into Soothe the Superstar mode. The Padres didn't get what they wanted, either. So everybody lost out. Everyone but Nevin, that is.

McGriff, who was playing for the bottom-feeding Tampa Bay Devil Rays at the time, actually vetoed his trade to the contending Chicago Cubs in the middle of the 2001 season, though the two teams sweetened the deal and McGriff eventually relented.

And last offseason, things got really ugly. The Diamondbacks' Williams, citing his desire to remain close to his kids, squashed a trade that would have sent him to Colorado for Larry Walker. Then Walker canned his part of the deal when he questioned the Diamondbacks' ability to meet payroll, something that enraged Arizona's managing general partner and the man who signs the paychecks, Jerry Colangelo. Everybody lost out on that one, too. Except, again, the players.

Even deals that finally get made, despite the no-trades, aren't necessarily the best ones for the teams. Wade figures he could have landed a better deal for Schilling than the one that sent the pitcher to the Diamondbacks in the middle of the 2000 season. But Schilling had a no-trade clause and would OK a trade to only a handful of teams. Wade did the best he could.

As great as no-trades are for the players, their gravy train may be slowing. Wade, for one, says it's less likely teams will be willing to offer no-trade clauses in the future, especially given how hard it is to trade players these days anyway.

Still, for now, no-trades are something every young, rich, full-of-himself player can aspire to, the icing on the cake, the big, unopened bag of seeds just laying out there for the chewing.

For the teams trying to deal with those guys who have a no-trade clause … well, for now, they'll just have to watch where they step.

John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com.

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