Evils of contract negotiations

On Friday, my younger sister heard the news she'd been anxiously waiting to hear since October: Brian Roberts is staying in Baltimore.

Every day, she checks masnsports.com and The Baltimore Sun to check the latest news, fearful that this year might be Roberts' last with the Baltimore Orioles. Since she heard last year's rumor that he might get traded to the Chicago Cubs, she's been pretty paranoid.

For example, a few weeks ago, my dad was reading the paper and told her, "[The Baltimore Ravens' defensive coordinator Rex] Ryan is going to New York [to coach the Jets]," but she thought he had said "Brian is going to New York [to play for the Yankees]." She told me she was "in a state of shock and couldn't breathe."

But now, all her fears have been assuaged with the announcement of Roberts' four-year, $40 million contract, which will begin during the 2010 season. What impressed me most about this deal was what Roberts said during the press conference announcing the agreement.

"My goal all along was to play with one team my whole career," he said. "That's something that doesn't get to happen very often. You talk about the Tony Gwynns and the Cal Ripkens.

"I'm not anywhere near in their league or caliber of player, but just to have that opportunity, to be able to call one place home for 10 or 15 years of your professional baseball career, is so rare. That's what really excited me."

I can't remember the last time I heard a player talk about loyalty to one team. Obviously, Roberts wanted a lucrative contract out of his negotiations, and probably wouldn't be opposed to a trade if it would get him the terms he wanted, but ultimately he chose to stay in Baltimore.

"I hope the fans realize that I won't take this contract for granted," he said. "I'm going to use it for the good of this organization and for the good of the community in Baltimore. That's something that has always been important to me, to leave a lasting impact beyond the baseball field. I have a great opportunity to do that in Baltimore."

After the Orioles' failed attempt to sign Mark Teixeira, who is from Maryland, that was welcome news in my hometown. Teixeira went instead to the New York Yankees, prompting one Sun reporter to write a column titled, "He's just not that into you."

Contract negotiations are one of the elements of professional sports that are most likely to frustrate me. I have two responses: in Roberts' case, frustration that the Orioles took so long to extend his contract, or in Teixeira's case, frustration that he demanded such an exorbitant salary.

Last summer I read Michael Lewis' book, "Moneyball," about the financial strategies of Oakland Athletics' general manager Billy Beane. I understood better the ways players can be treated like pawns, traded in the middle of a season if their statistics aren't good enough.

To give one example: Lewis wrote pages upon pages about Beane's obsessive efforts to draft Nick Swisher, but by the time I was reading it, the A's had already traded Swisher to the Chicago White Sox. He was traded again at the end of last season to the New York Yankees.

Unlike college fans, who usually know not only what the team looks like now, but what additions it will have the following year, the professional fan can essentially be rooting for two different teams before and after the trade deadline.

The last chapter of Lewis' book starts, "Billy Beane never allowed himself sentimental feelings about a game, or a player, or his own experiences," which sums up my objections to his managing style. One player, Ricardo Rincon, actually traveled to Oakland to play against the A's as a Cleveland Indian, but was traded to Oakland during the middle of the series.

I take some consolation in the fact that players get to play their sport no matter which team chooses them, and they're all being paid incredibly well. But unless they have played in the league for 10 years, and five with the same team, they probably don't get to ask for a no-trade clause.

Roberts has a no-trade clause in his contract, but not all players have that option. What keeps me from completely condemning the trade system is that some of the players have attitudes even worse than Beane's.

It can be hard to sympathize with these athletes, even those who might want to play somewhere else, considering how well they get paid. The minimum MLB player salary during the 2008 season was $390,000, and the average was $2,925,679.

Sometimes I can barely contain my shock when I read what the asking price is for drafted players and players who become free agents - particularly those agent Scott Boras represents. It takes some people decades to earn what they can earn in one year.

These problems exist not just in MLB, but in all professional sports. A team's ability to trade its players puts them in a vulnerable position, which is why they ask for everything they can get out of their contracts.

Last week, I wrote about the rampant use of steroids in MLB, and Roberts was one of the many players implicated as a one-time steroid user in the Mitchell Report. This week, he reminded me that some players have priorities beyond their salary, and that people can exceed your expectations if you just give them a second chance.

Contact sports editor Barrett Neale at barrett.neale@richmond.edu