Bobby Cox has been through this before.

Still, the Atlanta longtime manager sounded as though he took a shot to the gut when John Smoltz called this week to deliver the stunning news: He was signing with the Boston Red Sox after 21 years with the Braves.

"He said, 'I appreciate pitching for you.' I was like, 'John, holy cow, what are you doing here?'" Cox said, remembering his call from Smoltz earlier in the week. "It really hit me then. You hate giving up one of your best guys. He'll be a Hall of Famer for sure."

Smoltz, 41, had spent his entire career with the Braves, but that run came to an end when he agreed this week to a $5.5 million, one-year contract that could be worth another $5 million in bonuses based largely on how much time he spends on Boston's active roster.

The Braves weren't willing to guarantee that kind of money to an aging pitcher coming off major shoulder surgery, which led to a departure with bitter overtones.

The Braves weren't willing to offer nearly as much guaranteed money -- their proposal was for $2 million -- and the bar to reach some $8 million in possible incentives was much higher than Boston's proposal.

The Tribune Co. might narrow its list of prospective buyers to one this week. One thing we know is it won't be Mark Cuban, who was ruled out weeks ago. How brutal has the courtship of the foundering media corporate giant been? Cuban, known to be willing to spend big on something he wants, blogged his insider's view on the process with the Cubs. "I never thought it conceivable that it would be hard to spend a billion dollars on a sports team," he wrote on blogmaverick.com. "Add me to the list of people who never want to participate in this type of sales process again. I tried every trick I knew to try to get them to commit to me."

At a news conference to introduce him to the New York media, Mark Teixeira said, "The whole process was confusing. Sometimes I'd tell [agent] Scott [Boras] to stop calling me, then I'd call him five times a day saying, 'Tell me what you know!' Two weeks before Christmas, I talked to Leigh about it again, and we kind of decided that, hey, the Yankees are where we want to be.

"Cash [Yankees general manager Brian Cashman] might want to give Leigh a hug, because when I asked her during the process, 'Where should I go, where should I go?,' she would always say, 'I just want you to be happy.' Finally she said, 'I want you to be a Yankee,' and it was a done deal. Once we got the contract figured out, it was a no-brainer for me."