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Inside Man: A Bronx Tale (Part Three)
2008-01-17 05:50
by Alex Belth

Real Life

When Reggie Jackson left New York, Ray Negron's glory days came to an end. Now, he had to adjust to a more mundane reality, and a greater challenge—how to advocate for himself. Negron had defined himself by what he could provide to other, more famous men.

"Growing up is hard," says Negron. "In baseball, you are a kid forever. When I left the Yankees, I didn't have the players to protect me anymore." Negron married his longtime girlfriend Barbara Wood in 1981; they got an apartment in Far Rockaway, had a son four years later, and were divorced before the end of the decade. "It was hard to give my heart and soul to a situation when I didn't really want to be there," he says.

While he was with the Yankees, Negron gradually lost touch with his half-brothers who were caught up in the street life, junkies while they were still teenagers. "It wasn't until the eighties that we got back together again," says Negron. "To them, I was wealthy. When they reached out it would be out of desperation or need. Then my brothers started having kids all over the place, and I couldn't handle it, I couldn't handle it." Negron is shy when talking about them because he doesn't want to embarrass them. "They think that I think that I'm bigger than them. I mean, it becomes very tough because they are still your blood, you understand?"

Negron's two cousins who had been with him the day he first met Steinbrenner, Edwin and Christopher Perez, died within a year of each other during the mid-eighties; Edwin, in what Negron calls "a gang-related incident," and Christopher, from AIDS, which he got through a dirty syringe. Negron was with Christopher the night Edwin was murdered in Brooklyn. They drove to the Perez home in Brooklyn and were greeted outside of the house by Christopher's father, and a group of cousins and neighborhood friends.

"My uncle had a cardboard box in his arms filled with guns. He said, 'Take one, let's go.' That wasn't my style, so I stayed at the house with my aunt. 'She's going to need somebody to be with her,' I said. I wasn't going to get caught up in that. That wasn't me. I loved Billy the Kid," he says remembering Martin, "but I wasn't that Billy the Kid."

It wasn't until he got a minor acting gig in Francis Coppola's Cotton Club that Negron heard from his father again. "That meant something to him," says Negron. "All those years with Reggie and I never heard from him. But movies were different. Now, he thought I had money." Negron spent six months working on the Cotton Club at Astoria Studios in Queens, hanging around actors like Richard Gere, Gregory Hines and Nic Cage. "It was the greatest six months of my life. I thought I was going to be a star. But when the movie finally came out all of my scenes were left on the cutting room floor. There were a lot of cuts and edits with that movie, remember? You see me—don't fucking blink—cause you see me walk from Richard Gere's table for a second. Thank God they still had that shot."

Negron moved to L.A. briefly, had a small part in an early Andy Garcia movie, Liquid Sky, and the baseball movie, The Slugger's Wife. He auditioned for the Spanish boyfriend in the Rodney Dangerfield vehicle, Easy Money, and the Tubbs role in the Miami Vice TV show. "When I did the reading with Don Johnson, who was just out of rehab, I couldn't remember a line. He was so pissed off. It was one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life. I completely froze."

In 1984, Negron segued out of acting into the agent business. With a child on the way, he needed to find a way to earn more money. Negron's first client was veteran outfielder Juan Beniquez, who was teammates with Jackson in California. He later represented Jose Rijo, Junior Ortiz and Ruben Sierra, and a handful of others. But Negron was small potatoes, the Broadway Danny Rose of Latin agents, unable to compete with the high rollers.

"I wasn't the typical attorney-agent," says Negron. "The big agents had what I couldn't offer. I didn't have any money, I was poor. I didn't have cars, I didn't have the luxury offices on 5th Avenue. I was winging it. I was representing players out of my basement."

"Ray would get these guys started," recalls childhood friend, Jimmy Madorma. "Then they'd split for the big money."

But Negron did not begrudge Rijo when the pitcher left him after four years for a more prominent agent. "He just wanted to create a bigger life, one that I couldn't give him," says Negron, "We are friends to this day."

In 1986, Negron took a job with the Yomiuri Giants, and served as a scout and a coordinator for the Japanese team. Negron would compile scouting reports of big league players—mostly veterans looking to extend their careers—who the Giants wanted to recruit. For the next seven years, Negron worked for the Giants, making two, two-week-long visits to Japan each year, where'd he'd escort players, including Lloyd Mosby, Jesse Barfield, and Mickey Brantley, and get them acclimated to the new culture.

By the late '80s, Negron was a general manager in the short-lived Senior League in Florida when he met Brenda Bonini, a waitress at a country club. He moved to St. Petersburg, and the two were married. They had three children and though they are now divorced, they still speak regularly. Negron says, "I love the game more than the aspect of true romance. I'm a bachelor. I need to be a bachelor. With all my projects I don't have the time. Girls want you to sit down and watch TV with them. I ain't got time for that."

A few years later, Negron was introduced to Darryl Strawberry when the troubled slugger was suspended by the San Francisco Giants for substance abuse. Negron soon became involved with Strawberry, then later, Dwight Gooden, as they tried to rehabilitate their images and remain sober. "I was like their older brother," says Negron, who spent an entire year with Gooden in Florida, making sure he attended his A.A. and N.A. meetings.

"Dwight was difficult," recalls Negron, "he was much tougher than Darryl. He had a beautiful façade, but the disease had a strong hold on him. Whenever he'd call me a 'motherfucker' or a 'cocksucker,' or 'I'll beat your ass,' or all that kind of shit, I never took it personally, because I knew that was the disease talking that wasn't the person."

Negron acted as Dwight Gooden's representative, but since he had never become an officially credited agent, the Players Association protested his role. When Gooden signed the contract papers in Steinbrenner's suite at the owner's Florida Hotel, however, Negron was right there with him. After the deal was completed, Steinbrenner turned to Negron and said, "Well, what are you going to do? You are a Yankee, and I think you should be a Yankee." And with that, Negron's troubles with the union disappeared as he went back to work for the Boss for the first time in fifteen years.

Much had changed since Negron had last been in New York, but he was still important to Steinbrenner and he kept close tabs on Gooden and Strawberry. Today, Negron wears his World Series ring from 1996 (he also has one from 1978), which reads "Negron: Courage, Heart" on the side. "This ring represents the pain of that year with Darryl and Doc which was my true comeback from the standpoint of life."

Gooden and Negron lasted two seasons in the Bronx. When Gooden signed as a free agent with Cleveland, Negron was part of his contract, Tom Giordano made sure of that. A longtime scout of great distinction, Giordano got to know Negron while he scouted Gooden during a few minor league re-hab games at the end of the '97 season.

"After the second time I saw Gooden pitch," said Giordano recently, "I was just so impressed with the way Ray talked about Doc. Then I saw them together and Doc absolutely trusted Ray, wouldn't do anything without him. When I went to my boss John Hart and told him that Doc could help us as a back-of-the-rotation pitcher, I told him the catch was that we had to have Ray Negron included in the deal. As a matter of fact, I wanted Ray almost more than I wanted Doc."

"Ray had a reputation as a guy who got things done," says John Hart. "But the Yankees are different from other teams so people weren't sure about him when he first came over. But once I got to know him, I got to trust him quickly. I like to be pro-active and Ray was a guy who knew a player had issues before anyone else. That was his defining quality for me. He was able to pick up problems before anyone else so we could address them quickly."

"Ray was somebody who had a good intuitive sense of what major league players were and what they needed," says Charlie Maher, the Indians team psychologist, who eventually made Negron part of his staff. "Ray was helpful not only in giving me feedback about which players might need help but also helping the players prepare for meeting with me."

Maher schooled Negron in his working methods—teaching athletes how to be comfortable being uncomfortable, how to separate themselves from their performance, etc—and Negron responded in kind. "He was particularly valuable with Latin minor leaguers. If there was a kid having trouble and I couldn't get to them, Ray would go to Kingston, North Carolina or Columbus, Georgia and give me a report."

"Ray had been there," says Giordano, who goes out of his way to mention that Negron had an impact on all the players, white, black and Latin (as do Hart and Maher). "He knew what it was like to be a young kid just starting out in the game with nobody to look out for him. I think he took his own experience, his own failure as a player and used it as motivation to give young players some guidance. And they loved him. He saved a lot of guys who might not have made it otherwise, like Danys Baez."

"I consider him a baseball guy," says Hart. "He has a feel for baseball, a feel for people, a feel for the troubled player. There are so many dynamics in pro sports, and only a portion of it is connected with a player's talent."

Negron worked for several seasons in Cleveland before moving with Hart and Giordano to the Texas Rangers where he served in a similar capacity with Don Kalkstein. He was especially close with Robbie Alomar, whom he had known since Robbie visited his father, Sandy, in the Yankee clubhouse in the mid-'70s. When Robbie Alomar was traded to the Mets in 2002 he lobbied the Mets to bring Negron in as a liaison capacity but was rebuffed.

Negron flourished under the guidance of Hart and company and earned the respect and trust of his employers. He also proved that he could succeed away from the Yankees. Still, Cleveland and Arlington were a long way from New York. "When he was with Cleveland," says Maher, "he was professional. I supervised him and he did everything I asked him to do. He never talked about the Yankees. But he's a New York guy at heart. Hey, he grew up with the Yankees." It was impossible for Negron not to pine for the Yankees, no matter how productive or successful he was elsewhere.

In the summer of 2003, Negron was at the Stadium with the visiting Rangers. He had his youngest child Rickey with him and uncharacteristically let the boy slip out of his sight while they were in the press box. Ray found his son in Steinbrenner's office wearing a new Yankee jacket.

"Boss, I can't have him take that jacket," says Negron.

"He doesn't work for the Rangers, you do!"

After the 2003 season, when Negron's contract with the Rangers had expired, Negron went to visit the Boss one day in Tampa. According to Negron, Steinbrenner said, "When are you coming back to work for me?" And with that, Negron returned home once again.

Photographs appear courtesy Ray Negron.

Part Four, tomorrow

Comments
2008-01-17 07:47:54
1.   dianagramr
Alex .... excellent work (as always).

I sense a pretty decent movie could be made out of Ray's life.

2008-01-17 07:59:10
2.   JL25and3
I'm trying to get my flex plan tickets once again...I hate the Yankees' computerized system with a passion beyond words, with a passion that dwarfs even Mattpat's passionate hatred. I ate it more than I hate Pete Rose, Curt Schilling and Kevin Brown combined.
2008-01-17 08:09:15
3.   ms october
1 agree - i am going to say it everyday - this is great.

i saw both peteabe and deadspin linked to it as well.
just don't forget us banterers :}

2 i hope you are not planning to eat rose, schilling, and brown - that could make for a very upset stomach :}

2008-01-17 08:48:52
4.   ny2ca2dc
I don't have anything intelligent to say, but dude, this is an awesome series. Thanks Alejandro!
2008-01-17 08:54:10
5.   Adrian
Sort of off topic, but the Library of Congress just posted a bunch of archival photos to Flickr, including many featuring baseball players of the 1910s. I thought it might be of interest to my fellow banterers:

http://tinyurl.com/ypfe4o

2008-01-17 08:57:15
6.   JL25and3
3 Damn. I obviously can't type and hate at the same time.

For that matter, I was so addled by rage that I actually forgot Gary Sheffield.

2008-01-17 09:40:55
7.   nemecizer
This is totally off-topic, but have you guys read Jon Heyman's newest hit piece on Clemens?

http://tinyurl.com/28vk7f

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought people in the US were innocent until proven guilty.

2008-01-17 10:55:40
8.   JL25and3
7 Once again: that's only true in court. Heyman is free to believe, and say, whatever he likes.
2008-01-17 10:57:21
9.   ms october
6 ah yes- typing and hating - no where near as easy as walking and chewing gum.

7 except for a few notable exceptions - unfortunately the media and public at large really does presume guilt
i flipped to espnnews the other day for some reason and there was a segment with the captain who was promoting some new gatorade or something and then he had to take questions from whatever twit was hosting - the inevitable roger questions came up and the twit asked him something to the effect "if roger took steroids how would you feel about that" or some such - and derek said if, if, if - thought it was funny (reminded me of the we thing during the playoffs) - but in his ever bland way he has a point - so much of this stuff is if

2008-01-17 11:57:54
10.   pistolpete
Where's part 4, Alex? You got me hooked on this mini-bio now and I need the rest!!!

Seriously, though - have you guys discussed a book? I'm guessing Negron wouldn't bit until he was 100% positive that he wouldn't be working for the organization anymore...

2008-01-17 11:59:25
11.   pistolpete
7 Heyman's a weasel, IMO. I take what he says with the smallest molecule of salt.
2008-01-17 12:05:44
12.   Chyll Will
2 That's what you get when you do things while you're hungry. But as Ms. October implies 3 , there is such a thing as eating too many vegetables...
2008-01-17 12:06:33
13.   Alex Belth
Hey, glad you guys are enjoying the piece. Yeah, Ray has been approached many times over the years about doing a tell-all book, but it just wouldn't behoove him to do something like that while he's still in the game. I don't know that he's so interested in giving up the "dirt" necessarily either. At least not at this point in his life. I can't speak for him, of course. That's just my impression. Part Four in the a.m.
2008-01-17 12:22:55
14.   Chyll Will
I second pistolpete, Alex. I wonder how much credit one can give to serendipity and to hustle; his life from this perspective is a primer on both. Good work >;)
2008-01-17 12:24:50
15.   JL25and3
11 When you find someone in this whole mess who isn't a weasel, let me know.
2008-01-17 12:30:44
16.   ms october
14 no doubt. and also on understanding people - even going beyond the hustle. he's a guy with a lot of intuition.

15 speaking of which - bud got an extension as commish through 2012

2008-01-17 12:33:57
17.   pistolpete
15 To be fair, I thought he was a weasel before the Mitchell Report, and even before I started seeing his mug on YES 'Hot Stove' & his voice on Michael Kay's radio show every week...
2008-01-17 13:55:45
18.   dianagramr
Speaking of writing about the Yankees, let's all wish Steven Goldman well ...

http://tinyurl.com/yt6nss
(very bottom of the column)

2008-01-17 14:06:51
19.   Mattpat11
Bud's like a god damned horror movie villain. Every time you think its dead it comes back to go on another rampage.
2008-01-17 14:32:33
20.   Shaun P
19 Doug Pappas would not have been surprised. Part of me thinks its appropriate his "Countdown to when Selig is out" clock is still set to Selig's original end date, and is now running as a count up.
2008-01-17 14:38:29
21.   JL25and3
17 I don't mind Heyman. He disliked Gary Sheffield, which counts for something in my book.
2008-01-17 15:52:06
22.   Simone
Alex, I have been enjoying your pieces on Ray Negron. Interesting guy.

21 Heyman is alright in my book for that very reason.

18 Best wishes to Steve. I hope he recovers quickly and is back on his beat.

2008-01-17 16:02:38
23.   OldYanksFan
Anyone hear Heyman on Fan talking about his time spend with McNamee? UNBELIEVABLE! As I'm listening, I'm trying to relate it to what I've read about this whole mess, but it seemed like Heyman was talking about something else entirerly.

It would be hard to hire a PR guy who did as good a job 'defending' McNamee as Heyman did.
It would be hard to find a family member who would have more compassion for McNamee then Heyman expressed.
He spoke as if Roger had already been found in a court of law. There was no question of doubt in his mind. He made so many bad interpretations of Rogers statements and behavior.
He made McNamee look like a man victimized by Clemens.
He said the woman in the 'accused rape case' was found to be lying (not true AT all as far as I know).
You would hardly know that McNamee, as a professional trainer, sold and precured steroids and HGH and encouraged and influenced his 'friends' to use them.

I really don't know how Heyman can be considered a 'reporter'. What he did broke just about every rule of journalism.

Am I exaggerating? Have you guys heard the tape?

2008-01-17 17:02:16
24.   claybeez
Alex, I absolutely love this series. Great writing. Great story. I'm only disappointed that there aren't another 300+ pages.
2008-01-17 18:19:45
25.   JL25and3
23 Heyman isn't a reporter, he's a columnist. His job is to give his opinion.
2008-01-17 19:44:22
26.   das411
I just stumbled across this today, read the first three parts, and am now eagerly awaiting the fourth one. Terrific writing, Alex, it's posts like these that make the internet so great!
2008-01-17 21:01:18
27.   OldYanksFan
26 He's still an asshole
2008-01-18 03:47:23
28.   williamnyy23
23 Heyman is essentially a friend of McNamee since they met when he was covering the Yankee beat. He has written several puff pieces about McNamee through the years, so it's clear that he has both a bias and an agenda (defending his buddy against Clemens).

Even worse than Heyman's slanted writing is the length he went to defend McNamee on Mike and the Mad Dog. He told the dynamic duo that the charges against MacNamee in the rape case were dropped because the women was found to have lied. That couldn't be further from the truth as it was McNamee who the detective said lied. So, Heyman basically slandered a woman who very well may have been raped in order to defend his friend.

2008-01-18 03:48:03
29.   williamnyy23
23 Sorry OYF, I didn't realize you had covered the lying part!

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