is significant because your home team drives half of it. I don’t get the whole changing residency thing. Honestly, most athletes could afford to live in Texas, or Florida, or Nevada, or Alaska, or any of the other tax free states, and get an apartment or hotel or whatever and not establish residency in the state they play in. There may be a tax guy in here, but I thought where you worked drove income taxes, not where you live. Where you live tends to drive property taxes.

You make 50K in NY or Cali, you’re renting a dump. You make 50K in DFW, you’re considering buying a small house.

You make $10 million after taxes in NY, you live in a great apartment in the city or a big house in Westchester. You make $10 million in DFW, you live in a big house in Highland Park or wherever.

Either way, your quality of life is pretty good. And you still have $8 million / year to invest, buy a ferrari, go on two month European vacation, buy a boat, whatever. That stuff does scale with location.

Here he has the huge outdoorsman angle he could capitalize on. Cabelas, Bass Pro, Academy.

I can imagine union rules prohibit that.

and I think this cannot be understated.

For a player, you have a number of pressures pointing towards you taking the biggest deal. The unions, family, agent, ex-teammates and friends, etc.

They like to pull out the “Leaving Money on the Table” card, and the “Hometown discount” card.

Lee is in control, but he still has to answer to all of these people. In many ways its much easier to either say, “Its not about the money” and sign where you please, or just simply take the best deal. That’s why I don’t fault Teixeira going to the Yankees. It was the best deal, and he took it. It made the most people happy, and to be frank, I don’t think he cared where he went. If he had any preference, it would have been Baltimore, but they probably weren’t interested. (certainly not at the price he ended up commanding).

I think Texas is going to have to match what NY offers, but privately they will have an advantage if they do. They might not even have to do that if things with Jeter keep getting in the way.

Unions get by in this country by brainwashing people the instant they get in, so I doubt it is different in the most powerful union in the universe.

But again, we’re not talking about whether they’d be upset if Lee took a 25% lower offer in Texas. Clearly they would be upset. We’re talking about ~$1 million / year to go to a place where he can end up netting that differential. As cynical as everyone wants to be about this, it is not simply an ebay auction.

Cliff Lee won’t sign in Texas if NY is offering $3-5 million more a year or gives him an extra season. But no agent or union or buddy is going to convince him to go to NY if it means less take home pay and living in a place he or his wife doesn’t want to live just because the bigger number makes these other random people happier.

There’s a ton of people at work that have made fun of me for years for having a bunch of Rangers bobbleheads on my desk and now they’re always asking me about Cliff Lee. In New York, he’s just another ace and most of their fans think he’d be their # 2 pitcher. Is CC killing it in endorsements right now? Maybe, but I can’t think of many he’s done. Maybe he’s bigger locally.