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Go ahead and bash Zito for his control issues.  Dude walks too many people.  Bash him for falling short of his potential:  After his Cy Young 2002, I think we all expected better than the 2003-06 that he delivered.  So bash him for peaking too early in his career.

But for God's sake, stop bashing him for his decision to sign with the Giants.

Oh, hell, keep doing it if it makes you feel better about yourself. After all, this guy had a major life decision to make, one in which millions of dollars hung in the balance, one that would decide where he'd spend the next 5-7 years of his life--and whose interests did he look out for? His own!? How dare he!?

It was suggested elsewhere on this website that Zito could have conceivably taken half of the $126 milliion  the Giants gave him to return to the A's.  It was stated that "if I'm truly going to admire one of these athletes as an individual beyond the game, it's going to take action like" that.

Well how about this:  thank God for Zito and those that know him that he has his priorities straight, and that he's more concerned with his own well-being than he is with earning the admiration of fans whom he doesn't know from Adam Piatt.  

Guys like Zito have hit the lottery by having a major talent in a major sport, and they are being paid as lottery-winners.  And they have a chance to use that money as we all dream we would if we won the lottery--to make themselves and their families set for life, to never have to worry about money again.  If they're generous, to give some of it to charity.

And a drawback of all this is that they are going to have to live the rest of their lives with people wanting to take some of that money from them--people who say 'after all, you don't really need it, you have so much.'  People will come to them with a million causes they should support, a million investment opportunities they should get involved in, a million ideas about what they should do with their money.  

And that's what I'm hearing when I hear some of you questioning Zito's decision to take the biggest contract offered him: You are complaining that he didn't donate to your cause, one of the most ludicrous causes I've ever heard of:  it's the "take less money to play for my favorite team, because it's the team you played with last year" cause.

Or the even-more-ridiculous, "take less money to play with a team that I think has a better chance of winning a championship" cause. Never mind that your opinion of which team has the better chance of winning a championship is as worthless as Harold Reynolds'. How is it admirable to opt to play for a front-runner? If the Yankees and the Royals were the main bidders for Zito, explain to me how admirable it would be for Zito to take less to play for the Yankees. In truth, players in general do prefer to play for good teams over bad ones, but the size of the discount they will give good teams is a sign not of nobility but of a different KIND of selfishness.

Now, if Zito were to agree to donate his salary to these causes of yours, where would the money go to?  Ahh, I know--to needy baseball executives, who would get to pay players less and pocket the extra money for themselves.

Speaking of which (and by now I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, since I've probably already offended or bored anyone who disagrees with me and they've quit reading): how in the world can you bash Zito for caring more about the almighty dollar than he does about pursuing championships, and fail to bash A's management in the same breath on the same score?  

In other words, if Zito can fall under the microscope for putting profit ahead of your personal hopes for the A's or your personal idea of what his legacy as a baseball player will be, then how can A's management not fall under that same judgement?  Aren't they choosing to stay profitable as a business at the expense of keeping talent on the team?  At the expense of the legacy of the A's?  Hell yes they are.  And I would submit that there's nothing wrong with that.  

But as long as you're getting all judgemental, you might as well say that if you're going to truly admire an owner as an individual beyond the game, you would expect him to run the organization at a loss, Eddie D style, or Wally Haas style.  I don't know about you, but I'm under the impression that the owners are richer than the players, so who should really be giving up money here, if anybody should?  

In conclusion, if I'm really going to admire any of you beyond this website, it's going to take an action like this:  send me an e-mail with your credit card number in it and written permission for me to use it as I see fit.  Or you could send me an e-mail pleading poverty, but making a written promise to send me some money the minute you get rich.  

Oh crap, I've gone on forever, and I probably pretty-much embodied the kind of pompousness that I was trying to attack. But if there's a better way to spend a Friday night, I can't imagine what that would be.  

Have a good weekend.</vent>