Take a bow, Texas Rangers. No longer are you an awkward third party in baseball's most bizarre marriage.

A-Rod and the Steinbrenners, together again, and every penny of the 10-year, $275-million deal will be provided by baseball's richest team. Both parties emerge with significant bruises, but it's clear that they were the best fit for one another.

Ultimately, thousands of trees died — and we lost so much bandwidth on the Internet — because of a dizzying pair of bluffs.

The Yankees said that they wouldn't negotiate with A-Rod if he opted out of his final three years. That was a bluff.

By opting out, Scott Boras, in effect, proclaimed that A-Rod could beat the $32-million salary he was set to get in 2009 and 2010. That, too, was a bluff.

Give credit to both sides for finding common ground. But also slap them in the backs of their respective heads for not getting this done in a more civil, orderly fashion.

This imbroglio began over the infamous "Texas subsidy," the $21 million from 2008 through 2010 that Rangers Owner Tom Hicks agreed to supply to the Yankees when A-Rod first joined the team in 2004. Thanks to that donation, the Yankees were set to pay A-Rod $17 million next year and $22 million in 2009 and 2010, a pretty good deal for the game's best player.

But really, the Yankees had already made out quite well on the A-Rod trade. In his four years in pinstripes, he earned a total of $98 million — $52 million from the Yankees and $46 million from the Rangers. They enjoyed the baseball equivalent of free cable for four years.

For them to get all indignant, therefore, was a bit much. They were telling A-Rod, their cable guy, "We know that we've been getting you at a huge discount for a while now, but we're not willing to pay full price for you, even though you're an incredible commodity."

It's easy to forget now, but on Oct. 27, the day of World Series Game 3, the Yankees leaked the offer that they wanted to make to A-Rod: a five-year extension for about $140 million, going from 2011 through 2015. So Boras wasn't the only person distracting fans from the Fall Classic.

Boras countered by opting out the next day, during World Series Game 4, never giving the Yankees a chance to officially present their offer. At the time, this space found the turn of events hilarious. But Major League Baseball didn't, and many clubs didn't, and many of Boras' competing agents didn't. And it turns out that A-Rod didn't.

A-Rod, it seems, believed Boras when he told his client that the Yankees would be a player in A-Rod's free agency. When Hank Steinbrenner responded to the opt-out with the harsh, public "Goodbye," A-Rod was taken aback, friends of his said. He also grew unnerved by the wide criticism over the timing of the announcement, trying to relax with a couple of trips to the Bahamas.

Throw in concerns over his various off-the-field business endeavors, and how their values would be impacted by this unrest. And when the Yankees started showing interest in free agent Mike Lowell, that sent A-Rod straight to the Steinbrenners, without Boras.

This is Boras' worst hour, in over 20 years of representing baseball players. You had to figure that he had a plan, a package ready to grab, when he opted out. It appears that he overestimated the ill will that the opt-out created, and that his top client acted unilaterally to erase a mistake.

Yet this will hardly be utter humiliation. A-Rod will still break his own record for total financial package, and the Yankees will certainly pay much more over the next three years than they hoped. Maybe A-Rod is "giving back" the Texas subsidy, and he's not getting his $350 million, but the total deal still exceeds the Yankees' leaked offer.