Byrd, Schilling, Clemens: To Play Half An MLB Season Or Not To Play - That Is The Question

To play or not to play half of an MLB season.  That is the question today.  We're going to put on our hypothetical pants right now to try to figure out this conundrum.  I hope yours are cozy and snug.  Ready?  Here we go. 

Let's say you're a Major League Baseball player.  More specifically, let's say you're a pitcher.  A pretty successful one.  And let's say you've been playing for 10+ years in the bigs.  You're on the wrong end of thirty, looking pretty hard at forty, maybe even reaching it, and thinking about the rigors of a full season makes it a little more difficult for you to find your off season motivation than in the past.  Is that reason enough to take half a season off?

It's more complicated than that.

Let's also say that you're a free agent.  Your destiny is in your own hands.  You have offers to play next year.  Some teams offered you a multi-year deal (which could be as short as two years or as long as three with a team option for a fourth).  A couple of teams are willing to give you a one-year guaranteed contract with some sort of second year option built in.  Basically, in the worst economy in decades, you can easily earn yourself millions of dollars.  You can take home millions while the unemployment rate continues its climb into Jack & The Beanstalk territory.  Thus, you wonder if you should turn down an "easy" paycheck while you feel guilty for even considering it.

Meanwhile, as part of our hypothetical, you have two or three kids.  Let's make it simple and say you have two.  Both girls.  One is ten and the other is eight.  By playing another season, you're going to miss both of their birthday parties again.  Thinking hard, you realize you've only ever been to maybe one or two of their birthday parties.  Depends on where you're team is playing.  Or if you even live in the same geographic region they live in, since you get traded every so often and you and the wife decided to just raise the kids in one location and fly out to see Dad on the ocassional long weekend or summer break.  Your kids are getting older and you're missing most of the fun.

Then there's the wife.  You both signed up for this life.  It's something you've wanted since you were wetting the bed at three and a half.  It's something your wife knew she was getting when you got married while you were still in the minors, earning $800 a month and working summers in her father's office making photocopies of tax statements and, once in a while, your bare buttocks.  After 12 or 13 years of living a semi-marriage of six months a year, you're both getting a little weary of the lifestyle.  Sure, it pays well.  C'mon.  It pays great.  There's health and dental and, since you're in for your 10+ years, you're in for a pretty nice pension.  But, sorry fans, money is only part of the equation here.  Once you have it, you get used to it, and Real Life can matter a little bit more than fans think it should.

So after your season ended in September or October and you went home and saw your little girls every day - man, they're starting to really look like a cross between their mother and their father (the DNA tests proved their yours, ha ha) - and you got to sleep with your wife in the same bed as her every night and you got to go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning and not have to pack and unpack every three days or face five or six reporters every fifth day before you take a shower.  You haven't missed the pressures of the job as much this winter, the excitement and the crowds and the camaraderie and the midnight steaks at fancy restaurants.  You haven't missed feeling the pull from home, having to call as soon as you landed, having to try to talk to the girls on the phone and not miss that short window from when they get home from school and you're supposed to be in a meeting with pitchers and catchers.  Call it lazy.  Call it hedonistic.  Call it growing up.

So, now we've got our hypothetical lifestyle out of the way.  Let's say you do this.  Let's say you decide you're not going to go to spring training.  You're going to pull a Paul Byrd, a Roger Clemens, maybe a Curt Schilling, and you're going to possibly, if you feel like it, put yourself out there in the summer.  You're going to stay home in February and March and April and May and maybe play from June or July through October (hopefully).  You'll take four months of your 2009 back in exchange for five on the back end.  You'll still get a nice paycheck.  It won't be as much as a full season's worth - you're not and never were Roger Clemens, so you know there ain't gonna be no $28 million pro-rated payday coming your way - but you'll probably score $3 million to $4 million, take home maybe $1.7 million after taxes, benefits, commissions to your agent, etc.  And, if you play your cards right, you'll have a real good shot at playing in your first World Series.  You've always wanted that.  If you can have a better family life, make some money and give yourself a better guarantee at playing in the Fall Classic, finally, the temptation to go with this plan gets pretty hard to fight off.

But there's one big issue: Your Teammates, whoever they may turn out to be.  Oh, they don't all like it.  Some accept your decision.  Some wish they had the cajones to try what you're doing.  But others think you're taking the easy way out (they're kind of right and you know it).  You don't have to sit through the boredom of six weeks of spring training.  You don't have to play in the cold nights and rainy days of April & May.  You don't have to battle with the team through its slow start and problems with early injuries.  You don't have to worry yourself to death during a couple of really bad flights, especially that first West Coast trip that screws everybody's time clock off - but yours.  No, you're not there when the team is preparing for its run.  You're just there for the race.  You're there for the party but didn't come early enough to help set up.  Is that cool?  You think you deserve to play with us?  Huh?  Hey, man, we were here, early mornings - sometimes, but lots of late nights.  We were working out in December getting ready for February.  We got through that whole World Baseball Classic schedule.  We worked around it.  You watched it on TV and drove your little girls to school.  We worked and you sat.  So you tell me.  You think you deserve to have a locker next to me?  You think I should accept you because we have a GM who your agent was able to sweet talk into giving you that extra million?  You think I care? 

I don't.

So you pitch every fifth day.  Yeah, you throw your little "side sessions."  I'm going to come in for my extra BP and I'm going to work out like a madman and I'm going to bleed and sweat and play through the pain and get in my zone and do my thing.  I did it before you.  I'll be doing it after you.  You wanna pitch for us?  Be my guest.  Just don't expect me to be huggin' you when the champagne pours down my face.  Because we'll both know you didn't deserve it as much as me.

See what I mean?  Kind of complicated.  Are you glad I didn't add into our hypothetical any sick parents or maybe a weird fan who might or might not be stalking our player's family?  Or some record our player is close to breaking, or tying?  Or how the charity you're on the board for needs your support, either via a direct donation or your face in the public eye helping to bring in funds?  It's not cut & dried.  It's not black & white.  It's hard.  It's complex.

And it's not just about the money.

If you want to hear Paul Byrd's take on this subject, listen to my interview with him Monday morning.  You'll hear a different side of the story.  It's up to you whether or not you want to agree with it.