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ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Royce Clayton knew his days with the Texas Rangers were over as soon as the team signed Alex Rodriguez and hoped for a trade to a winning team.
Living up to their promise of treating him kindly, the Rangers sent Clayton to the Chicago White Sox on Thursday for right-handed pitchers Aaron Myette and Brian Schmack.
“Once I found out I was traded to the White Sox, I was basically overwhelmed,” Clayton said. “I was very positive about going to a place where I could win. That was my first and foremost concern.”
Texas general manager Doug Melvin called Clayton before he began negotiating with Rodriguez. Clayton said that if a deal was struck, he’d rather be traded than change positions.
The Rangers agreed Monday to give Rodriguez a record $252 million, 10-year contract. It took Melvin three more days to take care of the displaced Clayton.
“I know I have a lot of good years left at shortstop,” Clayton said. “I know I can help. Doug extended me the courtesy of trading me to the White Sox to secure their infield and do just that.”
Chicago won the AL Central and had the league’s best record last season. Although the White Sox led the AL in double plays, Jose Valentin committed more errors than any shortstop in the majors.
Valentin recently was re-signed to a $15.5 million, three-year contract knowing he might be changing positions. He’ll become either an outfielder or a “super utility” player who plays almost every day but not always at the same spot.
“Royce is a proven veteran shortstop and Jose Valentin is versatile enough to play several positions,” Chicago general manager Ken Williams said. “I called Jose before we made this move and he was all in favor of anything that improved our club.”
Having Valentin’s blessing means a lot to Clayton, who had the unenviable task of replacing Ozzie Smith in St. Louis.
“This is definitely a different situation,” Clayton said.
Clayton was heralded as the best shortstop in Texas history when he was acquired from St. Louis at the trading deadline in 1998. The Rangers won the AL West that season and in the winter Clayton signed a $22 million, four-year contract.
“I thought we had a chance to win the World Series,” said Clayton, who is owed $4 million in each of the next two years. “It didn’t work out.”
Texas won the division again in 1999, but lost to the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs, as they’d done in ’98.
Clayton closed ’99 on a tear at the plate, earning him the chance to hit leadoff in 2000. The experiment flopped. He was dropped toward the bottom of the lineup after six weeks and wound up hitting .242, fourth-lowest among AL qualifiers. He tied his career-high with 14 homers, but had none in his last 68 games.
Clayton also feuded with teammate Chad Curtis, who objected to music containing profanities that was played in the clubhhouse, and the Rangers finished last in the West.
Through it all, Clayton remained solid in the field, leading AL shortstops in putouts while committing 16 errors — 20 fewer than Valentin.
Valentin’s value to the White Sox was on offense as he hit a career-best .273 with 25 home runs, 92 RBIs, 107 runs and 19 stolen bases. He hit for the cycle in April and a month later missed it by a single.
“The addition of Royce gives Jerry Manuel a great deal of flexibility both offensively and defensively,” Williams said. “We can be a better defensive club with more range on the left side of the infield, or we can choose to go with a more offensive-oriented lineup in certain instances.”
While Clayton has known White Sox slugger Frank Thomas since high school, he’s especially excited working for Manuel.
“To me, Jerry Manuel is one of the best managers in baseball,” Clayton said. “If you don’t want to run through a wall for him, something is wrong.”
The Rangers knew they wouldn’t get full value for Clayton. This deal gave them a legitimate prospect, though not Chicago’s top young arm, in Myette and a fringe player in Schmack.
The 23-year-old Myette pitched 2 2-3 hitless innings in two days with the White Sox last season. A sandwich pick between the first and second rounds of the 1997 amateur draft, he went 5-5 with a 4.35 ERA in 19 games, all but one as a starter, for Triple-A Charlotte.
The 27-year-old Schmack has spent six years in the minors. He was 11-7 with a 2.78 ERA and one save in 51 relief appearances last season at Charlotte. He’ll be assigned to Texas’ Triple-A affiliate in Oklahoma.

ARLINGTON, Texas — Well, every move the Rangers make can’t be A-Rod sized.
Ruben Sierra, Mike Munoz and Kevin Foster agreed Wednesday to minor league contracts with Texas’ Triple-A farm team, the Oklahoma Redhawks of the Pacific Coast League.
Sierra, a 35-year-old outfielder, hit .233 with one homer and seven RBIs in 60 at-bats with the Rangers last season after spending a year with Cancun of the Mexican League. With Oklahoma, he had 18 homers and 82 RBIs.
Munoz, a 35-year-old left-hander, was 0-1 with a 13.50 ERA for the Rangers in seven relief appearances before tearing a tendon in his pitching elbow in April and missing the rest of the season.
He has an 18-20 record and a 5.19 ERA in 453 career relief appearances with Los Angeles, Detroit, Colorado, and Texas.
Foster, a 31-year-old right-hander, spent last year playing for Trenton and Pawtucket in the Boston Red Sox organization. He was 4-3 with a
4.19 ERA in 11 starts at Trenton and 2-4 and 4.02 in nine starts at Pawtucket.
He played with Philadelphia and the Chicago Cubs and was released by Cincinnati in early thj2000. He has a 32-29 career major league record.
The moves came two days after the Rangers agreed to a record $252 million, 10-year contract with shortstop Alex Rodriguez.

DALLAS (AP) – A-Rod is baseball’s newest lightning rod, a quarter-billion dollar example of the star system dominating professional sports.
Even before the All-Star shortstop finalized his $252 million, 10-year contract with the Texas Rangers on Monday, baseball’s doom-and-gloom faction was saying the money has become too much.
“This amount of money spread out over 10 years could probably buy three franchises or so at the bottom end of market value,” said Sandy Alderson, an executive vice president in baseball’s commissioner’s office.
Rangers owner Tom Hicks predicted Rodriguez will lead his team to national prominence, to “fulfill its dream of continuing on its path to becoming a World Series champion.”
Hicks paid $250 million to buy the entire franchise three years ago from a group headed by George W. Bush (news – web sites) and Rusty Rose.
“The Rangers are serious about winning,” Texas general manager Doug Melvin said. “I know expectations will be high. We’re ready for that challenge.”
But, while A-Rod now has I-Rod – catcher Ivan Rodriguez – as a teammate, they don’t pitch. Texas hasn’t added much to staff that had a major league-worst 5.52 ERA last season.
And the Rangers must contend with teams who claimed Rodriguez and agent Scott Boras bamboozled them into overpaying by tens of millions of dollars.
“I’m the whipping boy for `baseball games will destruct,”’ Boras said.
The contract calls for a $10 million signing bonus paid over five years and salaries of $21 million in each of the first four years – well above the $15.8 million Minnesota paid its entire team this season.
The 25-year-old Rodriguez gets $25 million a year in 2005 and 2006, and $27 million in each of the final four seasons. A total of $36 million is deferred at 3 percent interest, the money to be paid from 2011-2020.
The contract is double the previous record for a sports contract: a $126 million, six-year agreement in October 1997 between forward Kevin Garnett and the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves.
And it was finalized just two days after Mike Hampton’s $121 million, eight-year deal with Colorado, which had been baseball’s highest package. New York Yankees president Randy Levine criticized Texas as among the teams “whining about out-of-control payrolls” and said it would be “the height of hypocrisy” for them to “ever complain about anything again.”
“At first they were talking about 200 million – 250 (million) came out of nowhere,” said Rodriguez’s new teammate, Rafael Palmeiro. “It’s just incredible.”
Rodriguez, who can opt out of the agreement after seven years and become a free agent again at age 32, came away with an average salary of $25.2 million – 48 percent higher than the previous top, the $17 million Toronto first baseman Carlos Delgado agreed to in October as part of a four-year contract.
But A-Rod fell short of the highest average salary in sports. Los Angeles Lakers center Shaquille O’Neal will average $29.5 million in an $88.5 million, three-year extension that starts with the 2003-04 season.
Michael Jordan made about $33 million in 1997-98, his final season in the NBA.
“People are talking about the money, but you have to recognize the type of player he is and what he can accomplish,” Oakland general manager Billy Beane said. “And he’s only 25 years old.”
The lanky infielder from Miami – he’s 6-foot-3 – was highly prized because he became a free agent at such a young age. In seven seasons with the Seattle Mariners, he has a .309 career average with 189 homers and 595 RBIs.
This year, he made $4.25 million in the final season of a $10.6 million, four-year contract he signed against Boras’ advice in 1996.
“Yes, he’s special because he can hit a baseball. Yes, he’s special because he can hit it a long way,” Rangers manager Johnny Oates said. “We’re talking about more than hitting a baseball. We’re talking about marketing an area.”
Seattle and Atlanta were the other known finalists. The Braves did not make an offer, one senior baseball official said of the condition of anonymity, saying that they pushed Boras to name a price. The amount of the Mariners’ offer was unclear, but Boras said it was for five years.
“There would have had to have been a major hometown discount to get us into the ballpark,” Mariners general manager Pat Gillick said.
Added Boras, “The ownership was not here. It was in Hawaii. It was very clear to us.”
In February, Seattle traded Griffey to Cincinnati rather than risk him becoming a free agent after the 2000 season. The Mariners decided they would keep Rodriguez and try to re-sign him.
Seattle won the AL wild card and swept Central Division champion Chicago in the first round. But the Yankees beat the Mariners 4-2 in the AL championship series.
Asked what was next for Seattle, manager Lou Piniella said: “We’ll go upstairs and take a close look.”
In Texas, Rodriguez joins a team that has never gotten beyond the first round of the playoffs. The Rangers already had signed three free agents in the first three days of the winter meetings: first baseman Andres Galarraga ($6.25 million), third baseman Ken Caminiti ($3.25 million) and right-hander Mark Petkovsek ($4.9 million).
The Rangers already have a powerful lineup, but their starting pitching is weak, with Rick Helling going 16-13 last year and Kenny Rogers 13-13.
“We will build our pitching,” Hicks promised.
After winning the AL West in 1999, its third division title in four years, Texas dropped to 71-91 and finished with a 5.52 ERA, the worst among the 30 major league teams.
“This will mark the beginning of a national prominence for a franchise,” Boras said.

DALLAS (Ticker) — Third baseman Ken Caminiti, who missed the last month of the season while being evaluated for a chemical dependency, has agreed to a two-year, $9.5 million contract with the Texas Rangers, according to an ESPN.com report.
Caminiti, who was productive when healthy last season, hit .303 with 15 homers and 45 RBI in 59 games. His season was shortened by a right wrist injury and came to an end when he voluntarily entered a substance-abuse dependency program for an undisclosed problem in September.
Caminiti, 37, admitted to a problem with alcohol in 1994 and went through rehabilitation.
The 1996 National League Most Valuable Player as a member of the San Diego Padres, Caminiti became a free agent when the Houston Astros opted not to exercise a $5.5 million option for 2001 and instead bought him out for $500,000.
A three-time Gold Glove winner, Caminiti spent his first eight seasons with the Astros before joining the Padres in 1995. After a solid season in 1995, Caminiti put it all together in 1996, batting .326 with 40 homers and 130 RBI.
In his 14-year career, Caminiti has a .275 batting average, 224 homers and 942 RBI. But after playing at least 130 games in nine of 10 seasons, Caminiti has been limited to 137 over the last two campaigns combined.
The Rangers, who failed to win the West Division for the first time in three years, have been active this offseason. Texas was in the market for frontline pitchers Mike Hampton and Mike Mussina and Friday signed veteran first baseman Andres Galarraga. The Rangers also are reportedly still in the hunt for Alex Rodriguez and have a meeting with the superstar shortstop today.
UPDATE: Turns out the deal is for one year, with two years of options.

DALLAS (TICKER) — Moments after Anaheim Angels manager Mike Scioscia spoke of how important middle reliever Mark Petkovsek was to his team’s bullpen success, the free agent righthander agreed to a two-year contract with the Texas Rangers.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but the Rangers also hold options for the 2003 and 2004 seasons.
Petkovsek, 35, appeared in a career high-tying 64 games for the Angels last season, posting a 4-2 record with a 4.22 ERA. He registered two saves and ranked second on the Anaheim staff in appearances and relief innings (81).
Scioscia was addressing the media at baseball’s winter meetings and boasted about Petkovsek’s contribution to his staff. Unbeknownst to the Anaheim skipper was that the Rangers and Petkovsek had agreed to the pact.
Because he was offered arbitration by the Angels on Friday, Petkovsek will cost the Rangers two draft picks, including a 2001 selection, as compensation.
After a stint on the disabled list from May 17-June 12 due to viral syndrome, Petkovsek became a stalwart in the Anaheim pen, posting a 3.29 ERA in 34 games after the All-Star break. Over two seasons with the Angels, he went 16-6 in 128 appearances.
The Beaumont, Texas native and resident boasts a 45-36 career mark with a 4.49 ERA and five saves. He began his career with the Rangers in 1991 before making stops in Pittsburgh (1993) and St. Louis (1995-98).
Petkovsek also pitched for the University of Texas from 1984-87, going 29-3. He led the nation with 15 victories as a senior.