Pay the Man

If you stopped by to get my take on the Floyd-Manny Pedi fight from last night, keep moving. I went to bed before it started because I needed the sleep and don't really care about a sport whose resurgence in the second decade of the 21st Century bothers me more than I can say.

That said, I'll move on to something else, something that has bugged me since the MLB season started since all of us saw the day coming when the road and the sky would collide.

Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, in the first game of the weekend series between the Yanks and the Boston Red Sox in Fenway Park on Friday night hit a home run that tied him with Willie Mays. It also proved to be the difference in a final score of 3-2 in favor of the Yankees. Yes, I'm smiling.

For the outcomes of the 2015 season, that score is important. For lots of other people who never ever attend baseball games, that milestone is important-er. When the Yankees signed A-Rod 245 years ago (or so it seems) he had a contract with pay-offs due as/when he surpassed slugging milestones.

A-Rod is the same Yankee who was caught using PEDs and lying about their use and who sat for an entire season. I would like to point out he was a ballplayer about whom much murmuring had gone on for years previously, to include in the years before the Yankees signed him and switched him to 3rd base because they had a kid at shortstop they liked a lot-you may have heard of him, Derek Jeter.

The Yankees knew what they were getting when they signed Rodriguez.  Now Brian Cashman, who on his best day will never be Stick Michaels, the Yankees' GM, has gone on record to make it official: management/ownership doesn't feel itself bound to make good on the incentives it promised him contractually all those years ago.

I get it and as a kid who grew up a Pinstripes fan and who still doesn't see Wade Boggs, Roger Clemons or Rodriguez as Yankees, I still think the team is wrong if they stiff him. A sportswriter here in Southeastern Connecticut offered some thoughts on this very subject last week that nailed it, absolutely nailed it despite the reactions you can read in response to his position (I solved that by NOT reading them).

I fell over my own shadow in trying to put my finger on how to conclude this screed today with, of all things, some notes I offered the universe almost exactly a year ago watching the NBA, a/k/a 'millionaires in their underwear playing for billionaires who just don't care' dealing with Donald Sterling.

All I thought of at that time was the Frog and the Scorpion, and that's all I can think of now. Saintly and sanctimonious both begin with "S." And there is where the resemblance ends.
-bill kenny