Monday, July 9, 2007

Hometown robbery and the all-star game

Mark Buerhle just signed a new contract with the white sox recently to stay in Chicago for 4 more years. He got the pretty sum of $56 million dollars for his trouble, and yet he was basically robbed. He has nearly identical stats to Barry Zito is the same age and got 70 Million dollars less. Now generally i applaud athletes for not running for the money, after all how much do you need really? In fact i grew up wanting to be an agent, vowing that money would not be the most important factor in deciding where my clients would go. However, when your market value is potentially twice what you got paid, I'm not sure you're really making the smart decision. Heck he could have probably worked out a deal to go to the Cubs for 20 mil more and stayed in the same place. Not only that, but the White Sox wouldn't give him a no-trade clause agreeing to an extra 15 million player option if he gets traded after he had asked for a 17 mil.

Buerhle will not be attending the all-star game so like the rest of us he will most likely catch the game on tv... yawn. I'm probably in the minority of baseball fans but i couldn't care much less about the all-star weekend. The home run contest is just muscle bound guys standing there and hitting BP fastballs very hard. It's interesting to an extent, but not for the 2 hours or so it goes on. Then comes the all-star game... were i question if we really need it. Before free agency and inter-league play there was a clear and defined NL and AL. The two leagues legitimately disliked each other and wanted to beat the others brains in to prove they were the better league. Now the players don't care and it shows. They play anyway which is admirable since they do it for the fans, but do we really need it as fans? We're gonna see most of these players play against our favorite team soon enough with inter-league play and if we're that interested in seeing them, we can watch them online or via special TV packages. Sure seeing a potential Verlander-Bonds matchup is interesting, but Haren facing Bonds happens potentially twice a year anyway. This game is supposed to mean something, but the world series hasn't gone to a 7th game since they've used the all-star game to decide home field advantage. If it does mean something though then why do we have reps from every team? The home team should have a rep and everything else is based on merits.

As a Yankee fan i voted for A-rod because he was by far the best third baseman, but I'd rather see him sit. He's got a sore hamstring and the Yankees are done for without him, so take a break instead of playing in a meaningless game.

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