#Greg Maddux almost signed with the Yankees in the 1990s
“#Greg Maddux almost signed with the Yankees in the 1990s”
One medical emergency could have dramatically changed the landscape of baseball in the 1990s.
Greg Maddux, who was a key part of the Braves’ powerhouse teams in the 1990s, revealed on an episode of the “Toeing the Slab” podcast with David Cone that he didn’t intend on signing with Atlanta at all. Matter of fact, he traveled to New York in 1992 with designs on signing with the team that twice defeated them in the World Series.
“I went there to sign with the Yankees,” Maddux said. “I mean, I was shocked I didn’t get offered a contract. It’s not college – I didn’t go there just for a recruiting trip. You kinda go there to sign the contract and everything. I had the nice day, went around, went to a show, went to dinner, and they said we’ll be in touch with a contract offer.”
The offer never came. Why was that?
“I don’t know who it was, but … one of the guys had a heart attack,” Maddux said. “And that’s why I wasn’t made an offer.
“I got on the plane, went home, we had a layover in Chicago … and I remember landing in Chicago and calling [agent] Scott [Boras], and he said the Braves were able to make me an offer. Which originally was the team I wanted to go to, before I went to New York.”
Maddux was coming off the final year of his run with the Cubs in ’92, in which he won his first Cy Young Award. He was the most coveted free agent of the offseason, and the Yankees were gearing up for a return to prominence after not making the playoffs in over a decade.
Clearly, things worked out fine for the Yankees, who won four championships during Maddux’s 11-year tenure with the Braves. And Maddux was a key reason for Atlanta’s success, in which they appeared in three World Series and he won three straight Cy Youngs.
If not for the unnamed Yankees executive suffering a heart attack, things could have been real different for each of the storied franchises.
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