Christmas gifts

The Biggest Deal In Baseball History™ is apparently not going to happen - well, not right now, anyway, but this is one of those deals that reminds me of Glenn Close at the end of Fatal Attraction - she's lying in the bath, under the water, but you know she's not quite done... Buster Olney reflects on what each of the interested parties might wish for in their Christmas stocking...

As far as the deal itself goes, I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one puzzled by the Players' Association's stance. Curt Schilling had this to say:

"I'm [perturbed] that it's come to this I understand the ruling from the association in one way, that their goal is to not allow players to devalue their contracts because this is big business and I could imagine a scenario where a club blackmails a player to reducing their contract in one way or another. But you know what? This Alex Rodriguez case is so drastically out of the norm and so different from anything else that is ever going to happen that it upsets me.

"Let's not mistake this. Donald Fehr and Gene Orza and all of the people in the New York office, they work for us, they're looking out for our best interest. When I have a liability or a claim against the owners or some kind of grievance, I go to them. But for them to tell me that I can't go play somewhere for a salary that I want to play for, something is wrong. If they can stop that from happening, there's a problem. I understand the dynamics of the rule but this is not the case in this situation, in my opinion."

And so say all of us...