Bonds Makes It Easier For Rodriguez

Two huge news pieces in the baseball world in the past few days.

First we learned that Alex Rodriguez and the New York Yankees essentially agreed to a contract. Says Bloomberg, amongst others:

The two sides agreed to the outline of a 10-year, $275 million contract that could pay Rodriguez millions more if he sets the career home-run record, the Associated Press said yesterday. The guaranteed money was confirmed to the AP by a person familiar with the negotiations who spoke anonymously because the deal hadn't been completed.

The contract could be run up an additional $25 million if he manages to break the homer record, says the New York Times:

The sides are discussing a marketing plan in which Rodriguez, 32, would benefit financially as he passes home run benchmarks in the coming seasons. He has 518 home runs and is 17th on the career list. If he passes Babe Ruth, who had 714 homers, and Hank Aaron, who had 755, he would trail only Barry Bonds, who has 762.

“These are not incentive bonuses,” Steinbrenner said. “For lack of a better term, they really are historic-achievement bonuses. It’s a horse of a different color.”

Allegedly, Rodriguez made this deal with out Boras. It will be interesting to see the fall out if this is true. Boras was turned into an evil genius by the media. Maybe those articles made Rodriguez feel like a chump. Who knows. His wife was given a more prominent role by the Times and the Daily News than Boras.

The other bit of news you may have already heard is that Barry Bonds has been indicted for perjury.

Path to Indictment--ESPN
Roid to Ruin--Daily News

There are 2,438 related news stories according to Google news right now. I'm convinced sports writers wrote these columns years ago, put them in a drawer and waited for this moment. Now that it's here, they can just hand them to their editors with a minor tweak.

Did these writers learn nothing from the Duke lacrosse case? What if Bonds is innocent?

Let's swim downstream, put aside skepticism, and say he is guilty.

What does baseball do? Will they take away his home run record? If they do, does A-Rod's pursuit of the home run record suddenly become easier? If he is a cheater, they ought to strip him of the record and put the $25 million for A-Rod closer to his reach.

don't forget www.jayyarow.com.