AP source: Dodgers, Ramirez reach agreement

LOS ANGELES – The winter of discontent in Mannywood is just about over. Manny Ramirez and the Los Angeles Dodgers reached a preliminary agreement Wednesday on a $45 million, two-year deal, keeping him with the NL West champions. The stalemate was broken during a 6 a.m. meeting that brought the sides face-to-face at owner Frank McCourt's Malibu home. The gathering came after weeks of protracted negotiations that led to starts, stops, offers and subsequent rejections. At times, McCourt's frustration with Ramirez's agent Scott Boras surfaced, with the owner describing the agent "challenging to work with." All that was forgotten on a rainy late-winter morning when Ramirez surfaced in the Malibu mist to rejoin the team and city that embraced him after he left Boston at the July 31 trade deadline. "We got a great meeting," Ramirez told KCAL-TV as he emerged from his mandatory physical in suburban Inglewood. "I'm happy to be here. We got some unfinished business, and that's why I'm here." The deal is subject to Ramirez passing the physical, a person familiar with the talks said. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press because the contract was not final. Ramirez gets $25 million this year and has until November to decide whether to void the second season, which calls for a $20 million salary. The deal includes a full no-trade provision, and some of the salary will be deferred. The left fielder was believed to be seeking a four- or five-year deal that would take him through the end of his career. He turns 37 in May. But Ramirez found it tough going in a recession-plagued free agent market, with the Dodgers the only team to acknowledge pursuing the 12-time All-Star. Ramirez helped Los Angeles win the division by hitting .396 with 17 homers and 53 RBIs in 53 regular-season games. In the playoffs, he batted .520 with four homers, 10 RBIs, nine runs and 11 walks in eight games. "We all wanted the same thing and that's what was apparent to me," said Dodgers manager Joe Torre, who left spring training in Arizona with general manager Ned Colletti to attend the Malibu get-together. "After last year and the time he spent with us, we knew we wanted him back. It was just a matter of finding that common ground," Torre said. "As Ned said, you talk on the phone and to different people, you need to get face-to-face. It was a real good meeting. There was a lot of comfortable conversation." Torre, Colletti and McCourt joined Boras and the agent's assistant at the session that took about three hours for the deal to fall into place. "There was not one uncomfortable moment," Colletti said upon returning to Arizona later in the day. "It was more designed to put the personality back into the picture instead of just the negotiations. Manny seemed very happy and excited about the possibility, and I thought it was very good." Torre described Ramirez as "chomping at the bit" to rejoin the Dodgers. "We're trying to build a team here that fights together and sticks together and so it was imperative that we sit down with who would obviously be a very important member of the team," Colletti said. AP Baseball Writer Ronald Blum in New York and AP freelance writer Jerry Brown in Phoenix contributed to this report.

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