It was December 13, 2010, and team officials had reached the end of the line with Cliff Lee. They had talked on the phone and exchanged countless emails and text messages with his agent, Darek Braunecker, over the past 120 hours, but remained agonizingly short of an agreement that would return Lee to Philadelphia to form one of the greatest rotations in baseball history. Proefrock, Montgomery, and other Phillies officials had been at Citizens Bank Park that Monday night for the annual Phillies Charities dinner when Proefrock returned to his office to talk to Braunecker on the phone. Braunecker was pissed. He had better offers on the table from the New York Yankees and Texas Rangers, but had kept them in limbo for days while he tried to finalize the last-minute, cloak-and-dagger negotiations with the Phillies, the team his client so badly wanted to join. And now, just inches from the goal line, the deal was falling apart over a few million dollars. Contracts crumble in baseball every day, but feelings had entered the equation as the two sides talked money, club options, and performance bonuses.
