The Texas Rangers have locked up second baseman Rougned Odor for the next six years on a new contract that’s worth a reported $49.5 million, per Evan Grant of SportsDay. That’s good money, but the real deal-sweetener here isn’t the gratuitous amount of cash coming Odor’s way, but the two horses he received as part of the deal.
According to Grant, Odor raises horses and to entice him into signing the extension, the Rangers tossed in a pair of ponies along with his new deal.
As part of Odor's deal, the 2B, who raises horses in spare time, will get two elite horses. Nice touch horse 🐴
— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) March 30, 2017
As this picture confirms, they are good horses.
These are in fact the horses that sealed the Odor deal. This is not a joke pic.twitter.com/O0Ka03RXRb
— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) March 30, 2017
Look at that little horse! It’s so fuzzy!
Baseball doesn’t have a salary cap on teams, but I wonder if it’s written into the CBA in the NBA or NFL that animals given to players in negotiations count against the cap. Because, I’m fully onboard with professional sports starting to work the animal barter system into contract negotiations to work around cap issues. It could totally change how athletes at the very top choose their future destination.
Right now, when the money is all the same, things that can affect a player’s decision are organizational structure, the city and market they’d be in, state income tax, opportunity to win and other boring things. However, if you added animal packages to this it could be amazing.
Imagine this summer Kevin Durant opts out and hits free agency and everyone assumes he’ll sign back with Golden State, but then Woj drops a bomb on Twitter saying that the Knicks are offering a max deal and a stable of race horses to run at the Aqueduct. However, Marc Stein comes in talking about how the Heat are coming at him with a max deal and a pod of dolphins. What if we find out the Durant secretly loves dolphins, and that ends up being enough to make him leave?
Think about what Mark Cuban would do! Cubes would buy dudes entire cattle farms in Texas. All I’m asking for is to please let livestock become the next big thing in athlete contracts.
