It’s not written into the labor deal that it can’t be. It’s just that the MLBPA would veto almost any deal where on a nominal basis, A-Rod got less. Though I’m not sure they would veto this one. As you can recall, they sort of threw him to the wolves a few years ago.

I mean, that's your side of the story. From his perspective, he's clearly just trying to make sure you don't get hurt.

I’ve always figured that if someone is going to think less of me for what I am wearing, they probably are a person I wouldn’t want to ever have the misfortune of meeting anyways.

They can be re-negotiated however the parties and the PA want them to be. A-Rod would probably happily take some small cut in exchange for getting all of his money now.

They can negotiate whatever sort of buyout they and the MLBPA agree to. If he sucked, I’d bet that the Yankees would even be willing to essentially pay him out in entirety early if it got him off the roster.

That didn’t already happen like ... last week?

I think the even bigger question is whether his current levels of productivity will hold up.

Saying they wouldn’t be better off with Russ and Harden is like saying they wouldn’t be better off with Russ and Durant.

I dunno, wasn’t the issue with Harden going to be that they would have had nothing left for anything after re-signing him?

That’s how it’s gone for Russ and the Thunder all season long: Russ plays at superhuman levels of exertion, intensity, and production, and the team around him fails at everything he doesn’t do for it.

Studio Exec: You want us to greenlight the 3rd one even though we haven’t even released the 2nd one?

I don’t get why this is even a discussion. Winston may have higher potential, but his off the field bullshit smacks of problems and potential bust. Mariota’s ceiling may not be as high, but even if his “togetherness” is a facade, being able to put out the facade of it still tells people something.

It's funny that you bring up book 4 because I'm currently reading it right now in a somewhat slow read through of the series again. The plot is great. The setting is awesome. But I just read the chapter where Egwene "passes" Rand to Elayne, and it so perfectly encapsulates the problem I think most people have with…

That is true, but cedar planks are time consuming to prep for, and bulky to store in large quantities.

What are we talking about here? The truth? We’re talking about the truth. We’re talking about the truth.

And if there was ever a union head well-suited to tangle with the NYPD, it’s Michele Roberts, a former public defender who’s been banging war drums for her players ever since getting the job.

At least it is an ample bosom.

I'm not sure why he's a hack, but yes, I agree, a Mormon would have a very hard time reconciling his faith with writing this series. The WoT had some stuff that his faith might find dubious, but compared to Game of Thrones, the WoT is basically The Pilgrim's Progress.

Except, in this case, I don't think the end result would be that the last few books are of better quality than the rest of the series.

I’ve tried the lemon strategy before, and I’m just not deft enough to avoid making a mess of things. The lemons wind up sliding down into the grill and I can’t keep the fish squarely on them.