00:00Since you mentioned you had a chance to go to New York, tell me about the circumstances of that.
00:04How much did you leave on the table, and did you consider the Yankees pretty seriously?
00:10Yeah, I was there. I mean, literally. The negotiations didn't go well in Atlanta.
00:14That was at a time where I just, the year before, had been the closer for the last month and
00:19was
00:19going to return back to starting, coming off my Tommy John. And Atlanta saw it differently.
00:24Atlanta wanted me to be the closer and the closer only, no options. And I was frustrated with that
00:29and stick. Gene Michael was the GM for the Yankees, and he knew that my arm was healthy.
00:35And he offered me $52 million over four years to go with the Yankees. And I wasn't getting anywhere
00:44close to that with the Braves. They were only offering me three years at about $7 million a year.
00:49So I was like, look, we're not even close. Thankfully, my agent knew that my desire, look,
00:55I took less every time and I knew it, but I was boisterous about it because I want to stay
01:00in
01:00Atlanta. And I didn't mind taking less, but this was a little bit crazy. Mariano Rivera is the best
01:05in our business. Nobody's better, but I'm not taking a penny less than him. It wasn't arrogance.
01:10It was just like, I don't want to be the closer. So we ended up working it out of the
01:14buzzer. But at
01:14one point I called my agent and said, call the Yankees, tell them I'm going. And he said, I had
01:19made a
01:20promise to John Scherholz that I would go back one more time before we enacted this. That's how close
01:26it was.
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