The inability of the largest minority shareholder of the Boston Red Sox to sell its share is not a reflection on the state of the Red Sox. Other teams should be as healthy and as well run as the Red Sox. Not many are.

The New York Times Company – not the newspaper but the newspaper’s parent company, its executives are quick to tell you – has been trying for more than a year to sell its piece of the Red Sox. The effort began in late 2008 and continues in early 2010. Doesn’t anyone here want to own a sizeable chunk of one of the most attractive teams in baseball?

Apparently not. At least not at the price the Times company seeks. It paid $75 million in 2002 and now looks to have its piece of the Red Sox help get the company out of its economic abyss. The Times owns between 17 percent and 18 percent. But it is the largest minority share in the club. The Times’ asking price is not known. Nor is it known how active the pursuit of the piece has been.

Goldman Sachs is handling the sale, but people in that business don’t talk about their business. But we know that Goldman Sachs has not completed this bit of business.

Janet Robinson, president of the Times company, spoke about the attempted sale on a conference call with financial analysts last week after the company announced it had achieved a profit for last year and the fourth quarter of last year.

During the call Robinson acknowledged that the sale effort was taking longer than expected. I wanted to talk to Robinson about why it was taking longer than expected, but she didn’t take or return my telephone call. Instead a company public relations person called to find out what I wanted to talk to Robinson about.

I told her, but that didn’t get me Robinson either. Instead the public relations person sent me an e-mail.

The response and lack of response was particularly curious. This sort of situation always fascinates me. Here is one of the highest-ranking executives of the most influential newspaper in the world refusing to talk to a reporter about a matter she had discussed publicly. The Times wouldn’t be much of a newspaper if people it covered refused to talk to its reporters.

But the response was as curious as Robinson’s non-response. It began, “In response to your questions….” Funny thing is I didn’t ask any questions. I asked to speak to Robinson and when the public relations person asked what I wanted to speak to her about, I told her I wanted to speak to her about the Times’ effort to sell its share of the Red Sox. There was not a question in that sentence.

I had questions I wanted to ask Robinson, but I had not listed them for the public relations person. Had I known that Robinson was not going to speak to me, I might have given the public relations person the questions, but I didn’t know at that time and she didn’t ask.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention my one previous experience with Robinson. In November 2001, when the Red Sox were in the process of being sold, I learned from someone outside the Times that the Times company was part of the group that eventually would get the team.

In the course of writing an article for the Times, I called Robinson, and that time she talked to me, though reluctantly because the Times didn’t want it known that it was seeking to be a part-owner of the Red Sox.

But she didn’t talk only to me; she spoke to the Boston Globe, too. Until hearing it from Robinson, the Globe knew nothing about the involvement of the Times company, which also owned the Globe. In other words, Robinson gave away an exclusive story. In the newspaper business, that is an act of high treason. It is unconscionable.

Robinson never said anything to me about it, why she gave away an exclusive story, but I heard from someone else that she had said she felt she had to give it to the Globe because the Globe was a Times company newspaper, the story was about the Red Sox and it wouldn’t have been right to have the story appear in the Times and not in the Globe. With thinking like that, no wonder the Times is hurting.

But to continue with the e-mail response to my non-questions about the current sale:

“…on the February 10^th conference call Janet Robinson said: ‘We continue to explore the possible sale of our interest in New England Sports Ventures; the process is complicated and is taking longer than we anticipated.’ Later, when asked by an analyst on the call (John Janedis of Wells Fargo Securities) whether she is optimistic that a deal can be reached, Janet Robinson said: ‘Yes, we are. It is more complicated. As you can imagine, there is a lot of due diligence with prospective buyers that needs to be done. It is a multifaceted buy, because it is not just the Red Sox ball club, it is also Fenway Park and real estate holdings, and NESN, and certainly Major League Baseball plays a part in this as well. So it is quite complex. But we are certainly moving ahead in regard to selling this part of our portfolio.’”

Robinson was right about due diligence and Major League Baseball, but in case she isn’t aware of baseball developments, in the time the Times company has been trying to sell its share of the Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs and the Texas Rangers have been sold in their entirety and a group headed by Jeff Moorad, a former player agent, has bought 30 percent of the San Diego Padres en route to buying a majority share.

Had Robinson returned my call, I would have asked her what is taking the Times company so long to sell its piece of the Red Sox, and when she spouted the nonsense she handed the analysts on the conference call, I would have cited those recent sales.

After I received the e-mail that responded to the questions I hadn’t asked, I sent the public relations person an e-mail asking, “Does this mean she will not be calling? I would prefer speaking to her rather than recycle what she told others.” The public relations person did not reply.

So why is it taking so long? “Comments on that sale should be made by the New York Times,” Larry Lucchino, the Red Sox chief executive officer, said, declining further comment.

I asked people who have been involved in the buying and selling of sports teams, and none of them had any idea why it is taking so long. “I forgot all about it, it’s been so long,” one said.

The consensus of those asked was that the Times company’s asking price is what has delayed the transaction.

“The Red Sox are an attractive commodity,” one person said. “There’s nothing wrong with it so it must be the price the Times is asking, whatever that is.”

The Times has not said publicly what it wants for its Red Sox share, but no one obviously has been willing to pay the price so the share goes unsold. A premium price, investment bankers point out, is paid only for control, and no control comes with the Times company’s share.

Someone who buys a piece that big, they add, wants to have a say in the operation, and minority investors have no say in the operation of the Red Sox. John Henry is the managing partner, and he makes the decisions. That is how all baseball operations go.

While Robinson and the Times company wait for a buyer to emerge, they know that some smaller investors in the Red Sox have sold their shares in the last several years. If they derive any encouragement from those deals, it’s that some took time, too.

The irony of the Times company’s predicament is the Red Sox have been one of its better investments. In 1993 the Times company bought another Boston institution, the Globe, for $1.1 billion, and it turned into a disastrous investment as the newspaper industry crashed.

As a baseball writer for the Times, I never liked the idea of the company owning any piece of the Red Sox. It never affected my coverage of the Red Sox or the Yankees, but I believed it was a major conflict of interest. The Times cautions its employees to avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflicts of interest, but the Times itself seems to feel it is above that danger.

In fact, Times executives excused the ownership issue by saying it was the company and not the newspaper that owned a share of the Red Sox, as if readers and others made that distinction.

Now the Times company seems to be stuck with its investment. It’s been almost 18 months since the share was put up for sale. The elapsed time itself can be a problem. A share that has been on the market since September 2008, investment bankers noted, gets stale.

“Interested people have kicked the tires,” one banker said, “and they move on to something else.”