What Time Is It?

It's that time of year again boys and girls!!! Christmas is just around the corner...only 14 days for all you parents waiting until the last minute (cough cough). But that's not what I'm here for. Exam time you ask? Sure is and I haven't slept since umm...what day is it again? But still wrong. If you guessed Baseball's Winter Meetings, then you sir are correct. But seriously, get a life.

The headlines dominate ESPN and other sporting news outlets. Rumor after rumor, it's like a 12 year old girl's birthday party. Mlb.com even has a scoreboard to keep track of trades and free agent signings. The big news out of these meetings came yesterday when C.C. Sabathia (insert obligatory hometown Burlington Indians shout-out here) signed the richest contract ever for a pitcher, $161 million over 7 years. Who with? The hated Yankees. Now I am not here to evaluate this deal from a baseball point of view and I first want to say C.C. deserves every penny he can get, but this deal comes just days after the "beloved by too many" Yanks and Hank Steinbrenner asked the city for MORE money to pay for their new stadium. That sucks for tax paying non-baseball fans in New York. But that is a whole other story (see professional sports in today's economy).

And Hank will not settle for just C.C., he is still looking to acquire the rest of the free agent market - I mean just pitchers named A.J. Burnett, Derek Lowe, and Ben Sheets. And who knows how much he will pay for them. But I guess whatever worked in the past. Wait, they didn't make the playoffs last year? Yea, that's right. The old veterans lost the race to a young, built from the draft, the way teams are supposed to work Rays. The cumulative salaries of the Rays last season was less than just A-Rod. How about that for a trade? So I offer Hank a lesson, build a solid foundation of young and hard-working players who want to prove themselves. Then fill in the holes with your millions.

Finally, advice for Major League Baseball, give the small markets a chance by regulating team or player salaries so New York and Boston can't buy all the talent other teams work so work hard to produce. And good luck on exams and searching the malls for gifts this holiday season.