Misplaced Priority
PEORIA, Ariz. — His stoic eyes grow strangely heavy. His soft voice suddenly thickens.
Watching him grow up as a Dodger for the last nine years, you have seen tough Adrian Beltre on the verge of anger, on the verge of joy, on the verge of greatness.
You have never before seen him on the verge of tears.
"You OK?" you ask.
"Just thinking," he says.
"About what?" you ask.
"About the chants," he says. "Remember when the Dodger fans chanted 'M-V-P' for me last season? Every day during the last month? I was thinking, those chants were better than the award itself."
He pauses, the corners of his eyes now glistening.
"I never, ever wanted to leave the Dodgers," he says.
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Last week, Frank McCourt loudly called it a priority.
On Sunday, Adrian Beltre softly called it a sham.
The Dodger officials have had two months to spin their version of the truth about their failure to retain their most important player.
It is now Beltre's turn.
Sitting at an end locker in his new Seattle Mariner clubhouse, the last player inside after signing 20 minutes of autographs, he shakes his head.
"The bottom line is, the Dodgers didn't want to sign me," he says. "If they had only talked to me and told me their plan, I would have signed for less money to stay there. I needed to hear it from them. We could have worked it out. But they never even talked to me."
The communication problems that were a virus to Paul DePodesta's first off-season as Dodger general manager were particularly destructive here.
Beltre says the last time he spoke to owner McCourt or DePodesta was during a Dodger Stadium meeting a couple of days before Thanksgiving.
"They both told me that I was their top priority, that they wanted me back," he says.
He hasn't heard from either man since.
He canceled a trip to the Dominican Republic to await their call but never heard.
He hung out in an Arcadia home he had purchased a couple of months earlier because he thought he would stay a Dodger but never heard.
He thought about how both men made a similar "priority" promise to him during the division-clinching celebration, but still he never heard.
He read where the Dodgers were negotiating with Corey Koskie to replace him
