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"He's the guy in Seattle," said Meche, who signed with Kansas City last winter. "With their ownership being from Japan, I can't imagine him leaving."

Meche's instincts were dead-on: Ichiro's not going anywhere. The Mariners are on the verge of signing the superstar center fielder from Japan to a five-year contract extension that reportedly will approach, or perhaps even exceed, $100 million.

That was quite a rant by Florida Marlins president David Samson, who enlivened the apparently imminent Ichiro Suzuki extension by calling it, "the end of the world as we know it," on Dan Le Batard's radio show yesterday.

Of course, Samson knows an apocalypse when he sees one, having stripped down the Marlins and canned the NL Manager of the Year in the middle of it, and every time you turn on a Marlins home game there's about 18 people in the crowd.

"It'll take the sport down, that contract," Samson vented. "Right back to the ridiculous contracts. It can't be."

In case he'd been too vague, Samson went on to call the contract "a joke" and "inexcusable," then accused the Seattle Mariners of "mismanagement."

Insiders put Ichiro's extension at about $18 million per over five years, so middle-of-the-order money for leadoff-hitter production, and for a speed player whose legs will be going on 39 when the contract is done.
Overpriced? Yeah, probably.

Basketball Jesus wrote:Dear lord, what a moron.