Why shouldn't Magglio Ordonez say no to $15 million?
I got a nice e-mail from someone who suggested that Magglio Ordonez sit down with Mike Ilitch and negotiate a reasonable payoff to his remaining contract.
The writer was thinking in terms of maybe splitting the difference -- $7-8 million for 2010 -- with Magglio saying goodbye to Detroit at the end of the season.
And all I can say is: Are you kidding?
Put yourself in that situation. Seriously put yourself in that position. And then tell me you'd give back what might amount to tens of millions of dollars.
The fault in Ordonez's vested contract, which kicks in an $18 million payoff in 2010 (the club buyout would otherwise be $3 million) lies with the Tigers, not with Ordonez.
The Tigers never should have gotten themselves involved in a vested contract. It was likely to be poison five years into the deal, and it has become just that.
But that's not Ordonez's fault. He didn't write the deal. His agent, Scott Boras, did what he was supposed to do, while the Tigers (in the person of Ilitch) agreed to something that was destined to be trouble.
Look, here's why I respect baseball contracts: They're solid. They're guaranteed. They're about the integrity of a deal being a deal.
In the NFL, which specializes in contracts you might as well wallpaper your kid's bedroom with, the money typically is backloaded on deals that are rarely guaranteed. Once teams get to the serious money at the latter stages of the deal, they cut the player. He's out of his back-end cash. And probably out of football.
I have zero respect for that kind of bogus negotiating.
I also lack compassion for clubs that are self-deluded into thinking a seven-year contract with vesting options at the end isn't going to create problems for them down the line.
Ordonez signed a good-faith contract. That it was for two years more than it should have been written isn't his fault. It's his good fortune. And he deserves every dime he yet earns, all because -- in the creed of conservative America -- a deal is a deal.
