Friday, July 13, 2007

ON THE CLOCK: A-Rod to Robin Hood

this is the first of what i hope will be many installments of the ON THE CLOCK series. the idea's not too complex: i'm at work, i've clocked in, and i'm yet to clock out, so i'm on the clock. The Man's time is MY time.


inspiration: a-rod



so me and my dad are driving home the other day (i'm thinking wednesday) and we're listening to sports radio like we usually do...

some guy comes on the air to talk about this whole a-rod thing, that he can opt out of his 10-yr $252 mil contract at the end of this year and that he'll probably be asking for somewhere around $32 mil a year instead of the measly $25.2 mil that he's been getting for like the past 7 yrs. so basically the yankees are trying to work out a deal with him during the season (which is against "team policy") so that they dont get caught in a bidding war after the season. blahblahblah yeah yeah, right?

so im not a huge fan of bullshit or hubris, so i say to my dad, "if he's gonna sign with the yankees anyway, why dooesnt a-rod just stick with the outrageous amount of money he's making right now and maybe the fans will give him a break for not trying to squeeze every last penny out of steinbrenner's pockets, given a-rod's not-so-great relationship with new yorkers since he got there." (i dont think thats the quote since i dont talk like that but we'll stick with it for now)

and my dad says, "well i can see it if he wants to stick it to the man, and maybe he's a big charity guy and will use some of the extra money for that, like he's taking money from a billionaire and giving it to people who need it more."

my dad's not too big on welfare and i'm pretty much a socialist, so hearing this point from him kinda made me feel stupid, but i guess it just goes to show how much (little) faith i have in professional athletes, or any professionals for that matter.

so what i think a-rod should do is just what my dad said: hustle the man and use the money to do good. that's what i would do...i hope.

on a much less grandiose scale, this kinda sums up my life right now, at least that's how i'm justifying working an engineering internship at a company that relies almost solely on defense contracting from the u.s. government. what i'm making right now has to be applied to something that's gonna help others, and, according to my plans, it will.

hey, the jury's out on what a-rod will do with his extra money if he gets it...and the jury will be out on me until i figure out how to apply this money for a good cause (right now i'm thinkin that i'll help pay for my education in some form so i can go to law school and fight for justice of the oppressed). there's plenty of better places this money could be than staying in the hands of the owners of the company so i'm not too worried...

i think its sad that the world comes down to hustling the man for the sake of the oppressed, but hey, until we come up with a better system, we just need a bunch of people to be like robin hood.


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