All's Fair In Love and Free Agency

I love it when these idiotic New York tabloids put up screaming headlines like the one shown here.

"DIRTY SOX!"

Ha.

It appears the Red Sox made a low-ball, 7-year offer to Cliff Lee, the only reason being they wanted to make it tougher for the Yankees or anyone else to sign him. There was no real interest in bringing in Lee on the Sox part, and anyone with any brains knows that was the case.

There's nothing wrong with that. This kind of thing goes on all the time. Agents use teams to get a better offer for their clients. (Think Mark Teixeira in 2009, who had no interest in signing with the Red Sox. The Yankees were the team he wanted to play for all along and the Sox were just used for that purpose.)

And in the article itself, Brian Cashman admitted that he only scheduled a dinner to meet with Carl Crawford "only to try to drive up the speedy outfielder's price for other teams."

So what's the difference between that and what the Red Sox did with Lee? NY may not have made an offer, but when they meet with a Type A free agent, you know there is some interest.

The Yankees clearly don't like to be used by other teams. Remember when it looked like they had Greg Maddux locked up to a long term deal in 1993, but he wound up going to Atlanta instead? Maddux really had no interest in New York, just getting more money from the Braves, where he really wanted to play.

And it appears Lee is no lock to come to New York. I think the lead-pipe sinch that everyone in New York thought it was isn't so lead-pipe right now.

I can't wait for them to blame the Red Sox should Lee return to Texas or go anywhere else but New York.