Reporters regularly get pieces of information that we can’t publish in the state they are given to us. It’s the most frustrating feeling in the world to be given choice gossip and then never get to see that gossip glow on the page. So many good rumors die on the vine, only feeling some weak rays of sunshine on their crispy brown leaves when I whisper them to friends at a bar, or share with my editors. But sometimes a tidbit is just so good that I can’t let it go even after failing over and over again. This is a blind item, but it’s also a story about obsession.
In early June, I was busy calling any and all MLB agents I could reach in a fruitless mission to get players to open up to me with their thoughts about the COVID-19 vaccine. It would’ve been, perhaps, a baseball version of this story. One agent told me he’d heard from another agent at his agency that a certain veteran MLB player and possible future Hall of Famer paid some of his teammates to get the vaccine. (He gave me a name; because I haven’t been able to run down the story satisfactorily, I’m not going to use it here. Sorry.)
“He basically offered to give other players money if they went out and got vaccinated so they could get over the hump,” the agent said. “And I think it worked. I think there were guys who didn’t [want it] who said, ‘Well if you’re going to pay me then I will,’ and it got them over it.”
Hmm. Vaccine bribery?! Now that was a choice tidbit. A great story if I could pin it down. This agent didn’t even feel comfortable telling me who had told him this, but I had a general idea of where it came from, since this agency only has a small number of players on that team.