Roy Oswalt Really Having a Problem Getting $10 million from Cardinals

It’s disappointing enough that Matt Stairs has chosen to spend his retirement years assimilating his flesh and guts to a massive Red Sox host.  Now we’re learning that either Roy Oswalt is either not going to be paid by the Cardinals or is really being difficult about the “being signed” process.

The problem is that the Cardinals and Rangers, the two teams Roy has said he would pitch for, kind of have a bunch of pitching already.  They can live without him, but he, apparently, doesn’t want to stop playing.  If it’s not one of those two, Roy can always turn his attention to the far more desperate Red Sox, who keep calling to remind him how pretty they think he is.

This is all very much, I believe, the situation Roy has been trying to avoid his whole career.  He doesn’t want to be a trade chip.  He doesn’t want to be a Matt Stairs.  He doesn’t want to be a transient gunslinger, moved from town to town, giving aid until his services are no longer required and all the corrupt cattle barons are smoking corpses in the town square.  For some reason, he does not want that.

That’s what all the no-trade clauses and concerns about moving to a big market club in Philly were about.  Roy craves stability, I think, and I strongly doubt he doesn’t want to spend the twilight years of his spectacular career shaving whatever one-year deals he can off of whatever clubs have the sharpest blades at the time.  Unless said deals are for $10 million, as the one he seeks from the Cardinals is.

Roy, however, is content to just hang out and watch this all play out, comforting himself with the gentle hum of his hometown tractor or the sweet, sweet blood of winter’s first kill.  Of a deer or something.  I’m not insinuating that Roy Oswalt hunts people.  Did I need to clarify that?  Great, here comes another afternoon of carefully wording a press release.