I am Manny Ramirez

I get to play baseball for a "living"; people pay me to play a game.

I can hit a baseball a long, long way. I drive in a lot of runs. I can't really play defense, but then I don't really need to.

I am completely full of myself, and I know how to play "the game." Last year I got sick of playing for the Boston Red Sox, so I started loafing, not running hard, faking injuries, etc. while still drawing a salary of well over $100,000 per game. I was rewarded by being traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, where I hit a ton and led my team to the playoffs.

I have been a free agent since the end of last season, which means I can play for any team I want, so long as they want me. And really, who wouldn't?

Remember, I am Manny Ramirez.

I am thirty-six years old, and probably have less than five productive years left in the game.

I've been offered a contract with Los Angeles three different times this off-season, each one paying over twenty million dollars per season, and I have turned all three down.

I turned down an offer yesterday that would have paid me twenty-five million dollars for this season, and twenty million dollars for the season afterwards.

I turned down this offer because it isn't "fair." A "fair" offer would pay me closer to thirty million per season, for four years.

I turned down forty-five million dollars, guaranteed. No matter the economic situation, once the ink was dry (had I signed) I would have been guaranteed that money.

I turned down forty-five million dollars!

Don't you wish you were me?

In a perfect world (I am no longer Manny Ramirez-I am just the humble scribe of this blog) Manny Ramirez will go by the way of Latrell Sprewell, who a few years back turned down a fourteen million dollar deal from the New York Knicks because it wasn't enough, citing that he had "a family to feed." The Knicks told him to go scratch, and he hasn't really been heard from since.

I loved baseball when I was a kid. I have kept trying to love it as an adult. This is always difficult, as I am a Cubs fan. It is harder now than ever, knowing that someone has the stones to turn down FORTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS and will probably wind up getting it sooner or later.

If Ramirez winds up getting that type of money from the New York Yankees, I can only wish for the hallowed new grounds of Yankee Stadium to shake, rattle and roll on opening day, and then open up, swallowing every overpaid athlete into the bowels of the Earth (OK, spit out Derek Jeter, as he seems like a nice enough guy), never to be heard from again.

Forty-five million dollars! And Ramirez treats it like an insult. How can someone be so out of touch? And why isn't he being laughed out of the country?

If you make $100,000 per year, you'd have to work 450 years to earn forty-five million dollars. That sounds like one hell of a rat race.