Ruben Amaro Hints at Hilarious Eight-Year Deal with Jimmy Rollins

"“Everybody knows what we want to do; no secret that we’d like to bring Jimmy back. Whether it’s three, four, five, eight years, that’s up to us to decide and hopefully with the help of Jimmy make the right decision to be able to keep him here.”–Ruben Amaro, [h/t The 700 Level]"

Bit of an overshoot, maybe, but nobody react to anything until we can verify that this was a joke.  If Ruben is anything, he’s a jokester.  Remember that time he said that vaguely humorous thing?  Hilarious.

I may be confusing “jokester” with “teller of sinister falsehoods.”

The good news is, both sides sound like they want to make a deal and nobody’s feigning ignorance or making flamboyant public statements or showing up at negotiations and wordlessly placing a loaded pistol on the table.

The bad news is, I’m about as far from an insider as you can get, so these are all assumptions I make based reading shit on the internet.

I’ve landed in the camp of keeping Jimmy, as most have.  However, my desire to hang onto him is mostly because I can’t even picture the Phillies without him.  Who they be?  Some swagless gaggle of zombies, not lighting up the jumbotron with some cocky statement or electric smile.

The fact that the shortstop market is small outside of Jose Reyes and that Jimmy is still a beyond effective fielder helps make other people’s cases.  And mine too.  Obviously if Jimmy were just a corpse out there, I’d have to consider more than just the quality of his facial expressions when deciding whether or not I want him on the team.

Eight years is a very long time for a 30+ shortstop to be on a team, but it’s pretty obvious Ruben was joking.  So let’s all have a good laugh, ignore that gun on the table, sign Jimmy to a deal that everybody smiles about, laugh again at how funny that “eight year” thing was, and then let’s all go to grab a bunch of cheesesteaks, because this is Philadelphia, and what else is there even to eat around here.