Baseball Musings: A Night at the Opera

December 11, 2006

A Night at the Opera

Barry Bonds' contract with the Giants is not quite a done deal:

Here's a new one: teams asking for an indictment clause in player contracts.
That's apparently one issue that's holding up Barry Bonds' $16 million re-signing with the Giants from becoming official. There are others, too. The Giants want fewer of Bonds' personal employees in the clubhouse and a guarantee that he won't refuse to pinch hit, like he did last year.

For his part, Bonds wants reporters to be banned from asking him questions at his locker and control over some potentially historic memorabilia as he begins the 2007 season 22 home runs shy of breaking Hank Aaron's all-time best 755.

Sounds like I've heard these contract negotiations before:

Chico: Wait. What does this say here?
Groucho: That? That's the usual clause.
That's in every contract.
That just says, "If any of the parties...
"participating in this contract...
"are shown not to be in their right mind...
"the entire agreement
is automatically nullified."

Chico: I don't know.

Groucho: It's all right. That's in every contract.
That's what they call a sanity clause.

Chico: You can't fool me.
There ain't no Sanity Claus.

Posted by David Pinto at 10:58 AM | Free Agents | TrackBack (0)

Comments

I hope this will kill the deal

Posted by: JB at December 11, 2006 11:22 AM

But Barry's got nothing to hide, right? He shouldn't be worried about an indictment, cause he didn't do anything wrong, correct?

Posted by: rbj at December 11, 2006 12:14 PM

Exactly, rbj. Thankfully, we've made the sufficient tweaks to the legal system to ensure only guilty people are indicted and forced to make court appearances during crucial September road trips.

Posted by: Dennis at December 11, 2006 12:20 PM

re: the sanity claus

There is too a sanity claus!!!

--art kyriazis, philly

PS one of the greatest and most loved marx brothers sketches ever. Reaason 109 to have all their movies on DVD.

Posted by: art kyriazis at December 11, 2006 12:49 PM

There's a big difference btwn an indictment and a conviction. The ponderous thing is that despite all this nonsense - BALCO, the salty personality, the entourage - the Giants are seriously entertaining big bucks for all this baggage.

Posted by: crg at December 11, 2006 05:27 PM

Well, the good people of San Francisco aren't going to be storming the ticket windows for Bengie Molina or Steve Kline, are they now? In the absence of a move for another big bat, Magowan is kind of backed into a corner on Bonds. He needs a name to put on the marquee, and Bonds certainly has a track record for doing that in SF. (If I remember correctly, the Giants are loaded with debt from their new ballpark, and they need to keep the turnstiles spinning.)

It also makes a certain amount of baseball sense; the NL West is weak enough that the Giants could actually dream of contending, even with the cast of retreads they're putting together. If healthy, Bonds will help keep them in the "race."

Posted by: johnw at December 11, 2006 09:48 PM

Bonds is a disgrace. I think they should walk him every at bat. Keep the record from him. He doesn't deserve it.

Posted by: Chris at December 11, 2006 10:59 PM

Why walk him when you can put one between the shoulder blades? With his knees it would be hilarious to see him "charge" the mound. The way he hangs over the plate with his plastic protector sickens me. Pitchers should have re taken the inside of the strike zone years ago. Never to late to do the right thing

Posted by: abe at December 12, 2006 08:41 AM

That's right...pitching inside is a "lost art."

As is bunting, stealing, hitting behind the runner, throwing the spitter, and choking up with two strikes.

Everything about baseball was better in another era-except that during THAT era people said baseball was better in an even earlier epoch.

Baseball's the only sport where the quality of play is always assumed to be getting worse.

Posted by: John Salmon at December 12, 2006 01:32 PM