“With (Carl) Crawford and (Evan) Longoria going down simultaneously, I thought I’d make one last vain attempt to reach out to Tampa Bay, and to no avail,” Borris told FOXSports.com.

And then Borris returned to his normal shpiel…that of collusion.

“That’s because Major League Baseball has been successful in their pursuit in blackballing Barry out of the game.”

In the midst of all of this, Borris may be burning bridges with Tampa Bay execs by going public about his text message campaign.

“I’m not sure what Jeff Borris is trying to accomplish by saying he sent me a text message,” Friedman said. “But our longstanding practice is not to comment on anything speculative.”