Salt Part VI: The Key Chain

(Note: The latest in our Section 423 column on the Knicks appears immediately below.)

My move to LA has been an interesting one. On Wednesday I played basketball with Nellie and Freddie Mitchell, even getting into a verbal battle with the man from the Lou only to then reunite at the bench press to talk some Big 12 basketball.

LA has been very LA. A lot of good, but one very big bad.

This city does not have any fucking key chains. Call me crazy. How hard can it be to find a key chain? Well that's what I thought. I figured you go to a 7-11, a CVS gas station and one of them would have a key chain. Apparently not. So I am very upset and now turning to you, my readers. If any of you have a good key chain for me let me know, this is really starting to irk me.

Irk indeed until I figured out where all the key chains went. They went to our manager, the king of the fresh toasted sub, and our favorite Yankee turncoat, Willie Randolph.

On Wednesday Willie signed a three year extension. When I saw this on the ESPN bottom line I assumed that the contract would be for somewhere between $9-12 million dollars. After all, this was the manager of the division champion Mets who share a city with Joe Torre, who makes around $7 million per.

So I was completely shocked when I found out that Willie was only getting $5.7 mil for the deal. Isn't that what Victor Zambrano is worth on the open market? The deal didn't make sense to me. Why was Willie getting paid so little to manage such a high profile team fresh off its best season in years?

That's when I returned to my key chain dilemma.

Using one of the many connections that the blogosphere has provided me with over the years, I called a friend who works for the Mets to dig up some dirt. He told me that Willie's stance in the negotiation was clear from the beginning.

He wanted good money, but more importantly his own subway sandwich commercial and a lifetime supply of keychains.

I get the subway thing. It was always Willie vs. Joe and this needs to be Willie's town. Right?

But keychains? Apparently Willie has a long list of "keys" to the Mets upcoming season. From Jose Reyes' comntinued improvement to the musical growth of Cowbell-Man, many "key" things would lead to a succesful 2007 campaign.

And so is solved my keychain dilemma. Willie has them all.

I am not bitter. They could not have gone to a better man and leader. I am happy to have Willie back on board. Willie does things Willie's way and that's cool with me.

What is not cool is that I have lost the key to my apartment like 10 times in four days and in fact, I have no idea where it is now. I dream of one of those lacrosse laniards where I can swing my key around all day long.

So again, to you my readers, someone break into Willie's office and make something happen. A happy Sip is a blogging Sip. Otherwise, more rants about keychains to come.

Stay low.

Vaya con dios,

Sip

(Pics courtesy of myspace, post-gazette.com, 2000magazine.com, billiardpro.com)