If there is a Baseball God, Cliff Lee returns to Texas and the Yankees sit and watch Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and the best pitcher on the market go elsewhere.
I don’t know Lee, but I hope he’s enough of a smalltown guy to ignore the seventh year of the Yankee contract and stick with the Rangers. It’s actually funny—this whole sixth-or-seventh-year thing. When I signed my last book contract, I actually had two competing deals. One was a single-book deal with more money up front, the other a two-book deal with slightly more total dough, but less per project. I wound up going with the single-book scenario, but only after losing a whole lot of sleep. I debated publishing quality, length I would have for each product, finances, finances, finances.
Unlike Lee, however, I need to watch every … single … bill. Whether Lee makes $20 million annually over six years or seven years, he’s set for life. There’s no doubt about that—it’s somewhat easy to blow your dough after making, oh, $2 mill a year. But $20 mill? Unlikely.
Hence, if I’m Lee I ignore the whole six-or-seven debate and ask myself, simply, Where will I be the happiest?
Then I’ll watch as the Yanks sign John Maine.
