The influence of baseball has declined precipitously over the past two decades and that decline can best be illustrated by revisiting the story of a trade that never happened, which almost took place 19 years ago. In the winter of 2003, the Red Sox came within a whisker of acquiring Alex Rodriguez from the Texas Rangers, and the story of how it played out dwarfed everything else going on in the sports world even though it took place in the baseball off season and in the middle of an NFL season, which would lead to the third New England Patriots' Super Bowl victory in four years.

Red Sox fans have largely put what could have been a disaster out of their minds, but this is what took place. The Rangers had three years before signed Rodriguez to what was then the richest contract in baseball history: $253 million over 10 years. But even though he had averaged more than 50 home runs a year for them, they decided that the contract was too rich for their blood and put him on the market. The Red Sox, still desperate to break the then 80-plus year jinx of going without a World Series winner, were the first to bite. They made Texas an offer, which was contingent on Boston's being able to renegotiate A-Rod's contract. All of this was played out in public before our fascinated eyes. The NFL season was all but drowned out by the drumroll it created.

After weeks of negotiating, Rodriguez agreed to take $4 million a year less than the $179 million due on his contract, or a total of $28 million, in exchange for an opt out for every year after 2005. He was as anxious to come to Boston as the Red Sox were to have him.

So it was a done deal. But then the MLB players' association put the kibosh on it, claiming that the $4 million-a-year pay cut Rodriguez had agreed to was too big, so the deal was off. It was only then that the Yankees moved in, put together a deal the players' association agreed to, and saved the Red Sox from doing themselves disastrous self-inflicted harm.

What had the Red Sox offered to Texas in return for A-Rod? They were going to ship Manny Ramirez to the Rangers in addition to a young pitching prospect named Jon Lester. Ramirez was, of course, one of baseball's elite sluggers who would become MVP of the 2004 World Series and Lester would go on to a 200-win career and play a key role in three world championships -- the Red Sox in 2007 and '13 and the Chicago Cubs in 2016. In addition, in order to make room at shortstop, the Red Sox had quietly arranged to trade Nomar Garciaparra to the Chicago White Sox for slugging outfielder Magglio Ordonez. Those deals were all canceled as a result of the A-Rod trade being called off. But the plan to trade Garciaparra forever soured his relations with the team.

The canceled A-Rod to the Red Sox trade was huge news 19 years ago. It's impossible to imagine a comparable baseball story causing such a fuss in the present day climate.

The only comparable story involving a player during the off-season was two years ago when Tom Brady shook up the football universe by signing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after 20 seasons with the New England Patriots, but that just illustrates how much football has leap-frogged baseball in the public's mind.

A-Rod, despite putting up very good numbers with the Yankees, became a huge albatross around their neck when word got out about his deep involvement with banned PED's. He was suspended for the entire 2014 season and became a baseball pariah. There is no telling how the Red Sox would have done had his deal with them gone through, but they might very well be still trying to break the Curse of the Bambino.

There was another famous trade-that-never-happened in baseball history and it also involved the Red Sox and the Yankees. According to the story, Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey was having dinner one night in 1947 with Yankees co-owner Dan Topping. Cocktails were flowing freely when the discussion turned to their two great stars, Ted Williams and Joe Dimaggio, and how much they would both benefit if Williams had played his home games at Yankee Stadium with its short right field porch, and DiMaggio had played at Fenway Park with its nearby left field wall. By the time the evening was over, Yawkey and Topping had cooked up a swap of the two players, even up, for each other.

Then next morning, Yawkey's baseball advisers were aghast when he told them of the trade that he and Topping had agreed to the previous night. DiMaggio was four years older than Williams and much nearer to retiring -- Joe stepped down after the '51 season while Ted kept playing through 1960. Yawkey's brain trust convinced him that the deal needed to be sweetened for it to get done. Yawkey called Topping and said he'd like the Yankees to throw their "little infielder" into the deal. The "little infielder" Yawkey was referring to was a rookie named Yogi Berra who was then just learning the rudiments of becoming a catcher. The Yankees, knowing what a special talent Berra was, balked at including him in the deal, so the whole thing was called off, much to the relief of the Red Sox.

The difference between the DiMaggio for Williams trade-that-never-happened and the canceled A-Rod to Boston deal was that no one knew anything about the DiMaggio-Williams deal until some years after it almost took place when word of it leaked out, whereas the A-Rod close call played out in plain sight. Red Sox fans spent the next decade lustily booing every move Rodriguez made in a Yankee uniform, conveniently forgetting how close he came to wearing a Red Sox one. In retrospect, we can say with some assurance that Boston dodged a bullet that time.

- Dick Flavin is a New York Times bestselling author; the Boston Red Sox "Poet Laureate" and The Pilot's recently minted Sports' columnist.