No need for Greed

I wrote this on Friday night.  Things might have changed over the weekend.  They would have if I were the person involved here...

Let's say you make 8 million dollars a year for baking pies.

"You make 8 million dollars a year for baking pies."  That sounds like fun!

Now let's say that above your 8 million semolians, you get an incentive bonus for making a certain amount of pies.  Let's say that if you make 210 pies, your salary is augmented by another $500,000.

Before you run off to enroll in Mrs Smith's Pie Baking School, let me run the rest of the scenario for you.  It started to rain very hard as you were just about finishing the 210th pie, and your supervisor told you to go on home, and maybe finish the 210th pie by the end of the year.

And then, let's say you said, "Nah."

Phil Hughes

All right, enough with the pretendin' and playactin'.  The fact is that Phil Hughes, a pitcher for the Minnesota Twins, earns a base salary of $8,000,000 per year, and a bonus kicks in if he pitches 210 innings per year.  The last time he pitched was last Wednesday, when the heavens opened up over the land of 10,000 lakes, and the Twins game went into a rain delay for over an hour. Hughes did not come back out to pitch when the game resumed; pitchers don't usually do that after a delay, because their arms tighten up and would need to be stretched back out, so, no. 

When he left the game, there were two outs in the inning, bringing his season total to 209 2/3 innings.  One more out - if that rain had held off for a few minutes - and he would have pocketed another half a million.  

The Twins offered him a chance to get into another game over the weekend as the regular season ended, but Hughes said he didn't think it was proper for a starting pitcher to make a token appearance like that, and did not want to risk injury at any rate.  

Meanwhile, in pro football, Detroit Lions linebacker Stephen Tulloch recently tackled Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers, and then celebrated by mocking the Rodgers "discount double check" move which you have seen in so many State Farm commercials.

What you haven't seen before is a man who had not missed a game in his 9-year career who mimicked Aaron Rodgers, and in so doing, fell to the ground, having torn the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

Tulloch will be out the rest of the season and faces painful surgery and a grueling rehabilitation. 

Maybe Phil Hughes is the smartest athlete we have!