Exhibit 1.14

The kid that Odalis Perez ate and whose skin he wears Vincent D'Onofrio style.

Odalis Perez was unexpectedly bad for the Royals last night. Which is to say that he is always bad, but last night he was worse than usual, somewhat surprising considering he has developed into quite the consistent pitcher. Which is to say consistently bad.

The normal Odalis Perez start goes something like this: 5.2 IP with 4 runs earned (and sometimes, just for fun, an unearned run) with 8 hits, 3k, 2 BB, 3 visits to the mound by the pitching coach, and 1 me turning off the game until a Gil Meche or Brian Bannister start. That's not statistics based, that's just the perceived line of watching him pitch--except for me turning off the game, that I can document.

The Royals can't complain as they aren't even paying his salary (or at least not most of it). This may be one of the all-time great things about sports that, if translated to the real world, would make absolutely no sense (though we may need to do it anyway). If my company traded me to say, McDonald's, I'd probably perform pretty poorly too until I learned from my McManager that my old company was still paying my salary but just didn't want me around anymore. At that point I might start making a few more Quarter Pounders per hour just to prove them wrong, but I guess Odalis and I are just different people.

(This concept gets even more ridiculous in the NBA. Can you imagine being, say, Theo Ratliffe and repeatedly getting traded from team to team, each one of which only wants you because A. they need your awful, awful contract to make a deal for a superstar work and B. that awful contract is about to expire and provide cap relief? How could this situation possibly be comfortable for anyone. "Should I start warming up, Coach?" "No, Theo, why don't you just go sit at the end of the bench until your deal expires in 2009." The concept of the buy-out is even worse. The Portland Trail Blazers just gave Stevie Francis something like $30 million to not play basketball for them. Actually, this one we may need to institute in the real world).

Odalis's contract is somewhat understandable considering his remarkable 2002 season:

222.1 IP, 3.00 ERA, 4 CG, 2 SO, 155 K, 38 BB, .226 BA against, .99 WHIP, 15 wins and 10 losses.

That's a damn fine season. Not Cy Young worthy, but I could see it getting a vote or two (Ed note: it didn't because Randy Johnson was incredible that year). He probably should have won 20 games. He was an All-Star. Odalis was 24-25 years old throughout that season (scary considering that's my current age and an Odalis Perez-like collapse could be just around the corner) and he had never been that good again when the Dodgers locked him up in 2005 based mostly on the promise of that earlier season. Within a few months of the deal the Dodgers already regretted it, and within 18 months they'd shipped him, two legit prospects, and something like $20 million off to the Royals for a 35-year-old reliever who, ironically, had been on the Dodgers the year before but who they didn't want to resign. Ouch.

This is the equivalent of the company I work for trading me, my salary, the basket of Take Fives, my purple editing pens, and one of our data analysts to McDonald's for a number four. I don't even think they'd be able to get it super-sized unless they threw in one of the coffee pots.