BOSOX OUTBID BOMBERS

The Red Sox exacted a measure of revenge against the Yankees, when they outbid the Bronx Bombers for the services of the top junior defector from Cuba. According to the Boston Globe:

The Sox signed 18-year-old righthander Gary Galvez for a bonus similar to the amount players selected late in the second round or high in the third round of the amateur draft receive: about $500,000.

''We'll end up signing 20 to 25 kids internationally this year, and we think this will probably be the best guy we sign,'' said Louie Eljaua, the team's director of international scouting. ''This is our first-round pick.''

Galvez, whose fastball has hit 93 and throws an above-average curve, was the ace of Cuba's junior national team before he defected last August. With 23 other refugees, he rode a vessel to an island near Key Largo, where the group was rescued by the US Coast Guard. He spent a month in Miami before he established residency in the Dominican Republic.

Several teams bid on Galvez, with the Sox and Yankees among them. Eljaua said the Sox did not make the top financial offer to Galvez, but prevailed because of the relationship they had built with him and because of his confidence in the team's pitching program.

''Every time you have a high-profile international guy, it's usually going to be the Yankees or us in the end,'' Eljaua said. ''This time, the good guys won.''

...Galvez will report to the Sox once he obtains a visa, which could take several weeks. He is projected to pitch at Single A Augusta.

WHAT'S UP WITH PRINCE P?

In what has been a relatively quiet Red Sox spring thus far, the only potential cause for noise could come from an expected source: the great Pedro Martinez. Dan Shaughnessy stressed that management play hardball with Martinez.

On Saturday, the Globe reported that:

Principal owner John W. Henry and CEO Larry Lucchino met privately with Martinez soon after he arrived Friday at the club's spring training headquarters - a meeting that apparently bred considerable good will.

''I know we're going to work it out,'' Martinez said in a news conference after the first formal workout for pitchers and catchers. ''They're a group of responsible owners. They know what to do. They know their business. I'm sure they're going to work something out. I'd like to finish my career in Boston.''

''If they don't pick it up now, it means they don't trust me,'' he said. ''It's a matter of confidence between them and me, and I'm sure they have the confidence, and I'm fine.''

''The uncertainty of whether I'm going to be in Boston is not easy to handle,'' he said. ''That's why I don't want to be in that position of, where am I going to go? Am I going to stay in Boston or not? That's not a fair position for a player like me.

WHO'S ON FIRST?

While the Sox happily play musical chairs with their first basemen, Kevin Millar finally arrived at camp to throw his hat in the ring.

According to the Globe:

The breakthrough in the Kevin Millar situation...came after Japanese officials were told that if the standoff continued, Major League Baseball might not proceed with plans to send the Seattle Mariners and Oakland A's to Japan to open the 2003 season there next month.

Mike C, over at Baseball Rants thinks all is not kosher in Beantown:

Millar should be a useful member of the Red Sox team this season. But any baseball fan should be rooting as hard as they can for the Yankees to bury the Sox by the break. The whole affair stinks worse than last week's meatloaf. Of course, the Pavlovian fans have been taught that the Yankees are the evil ones because the spend their seemingly inexhaustable funds wisely as opposed to the Red Sox, who appear to get a mulligan once or twice a year and whose owners were fast-tracked into purchasing the team even though better offers were on the table. If that's not evil, I don't know what is.

At least Millar has found himself in a friendly environment:

A friend of Garciaparra, Trot Nixon, Lou Merloni, and Todd Walker, Millar is renowned for trying almost anything to help him hit, including spraying his bat with deer urine last year on Opening Day after his inaugural deer hunting trip. When he went 0 for 3, though, he abandoned the gimmick.

Good thing, or it might have been harder to make even more friends on his new team.

ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN

Is there any column that is more complete and thorough on a weekly basis than Gordon Edes' Sunday Notes feature? If so, let me know, cause it's bound to be a treat. Edes examines the hype at Yankee camp this week. So does Tony Massarotti, who like his peers in New York, Joel Sherman and even Bob Klapisch, is clearly a provocateur:

Whatever air of invincibility the Yankees possessed during the five-year span between 1996-2000 is going, going, gone.

``I think if you spend $180 million, I don't think it's just because you have it to spend,'' Red Sox owner John Henry said of the Yankees' current estimated payroll upon arriving at his team's spring training facility on Friday.

``I think it's also because there must be a need.''

...Do the Yankees have talent? Of course they do, though the 2001 Red Sox proved that talent alone is not enough. As much as the Yankees were stocked while winning four World Series titles during the final five years of the last millennium, they were also a unique collection of professionals. No lesser an authority than Seattle Mariners general manager Pat Gillick suggested before last season that the absence of chemistry (Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius) would adversely affect the Yankees more than anyone believed. It certainly seems Gillick hit the bull's eye.