There's No Discount and the Yankees Folded

Several lies -- or at best several gross misperceptions -- are growing around A-Rod's contract. The lies:

1. A-Rod is coming back at a "discount" -- In no way, shape or form is A-Rod "leaving money on the table" or offering a discount to the Yankees. He is reportedly signing a $300 million package that is the largest such deal in sports history. This deal is $10 million BIGGER than the absolute final, final offer the Yankees had planned to offer of $290 million when they still hoped to talk with A-Rod before he opted out. This is not $21 million "lower" than anything.

2. The Yankees called A-Rod's bluff -- I don't know how this could even get started. A-Rod opted out. The Yankees insisted till they were blue in the face that if A-Rod opted out they would NOT negotiate with him. When he opted out, they repeatedly and angrily said it was over, goodbye, sayonara. Re-open talks? No way. Then they began to negotiate. A-Rod had to say he wanted to be a Yankee? Big deal? That's the sort of nonsense the Steinbrenners love to "demand." I'd say I want to be a little green Martian if you paid me $300 million.

3. Scott Boras looks like a fool -- In what universe? He told his client they would get a recod-setting deal. They got it. Boras told the world he was looking for $350 million, which everyone said was completely insane. A-Rod is getting $300 million, which is by far the biggest ever. The typical average salary for the biggest mega-deal players since A-Rod's last blockbuster is closer to $20 mil. A-Rod will be getting $30 mil. And Boras has indeed been involved in ironing out these details. (The home run incentives smack of his idiocy completely.) It would be illegal of the Yankees to try and block Boras. If he sat in another room or whatever, so what? Everything Boras told his client came true.

4. The Yankees played hardball -- Ha! The Yankees bid against themselves even AFTER no other team began to come even close to making an aggressive move on A-Rod. They look just as stupid as the Texas Rangers did when they outbid the next highest offer by, what, $80 mil? $100 mil? (I forget right now.) The Yankees even outbid their OWN highest offer and even after insisting they HAD to get a $21 mil "discount." Someone tell me where the discount is. Did someone offer A-Rod $321 mil? Cause that's the only way it's true. Even if you think it's great A-Rod came back, the Yankees wildly overpaid and have only themselves to blame. They could have patiently waited to see what other offers -- if any -- came his way. There isn't a chance in hell that someone would have gotten them in a bidding war and they would have ended up paying MORE than the biggest package in history.