The Sports Economist

A snowman stands in snow that blanketed Progressive Field, home of the Cleveland Indians baseball team, after an unexpected snowstorm canceled of the Indians' home opener against the New York Yankees. The team plans to pump piles of man-made snow into the park and also create an ice skating rink and tubing shoots to create a winter play land for fans beginning on the day after Thanksgiving this year. (Mark Duncan / AP / File)

When is a stadium not a stadium?

By Phil Miller, Guest blogger / 11.23.10

The Cleveland Indians are getting ready to open a skating track and 10-lane snow tubing hill at Progressive Field during the offseason.

…Senior director of merchandising and licensing Kurt Schloss declined to specify financial goals. He says the aim is attracting fans downtown during the offseason.

That’s from the Akron News. That raises the question of why the Indians would offer a service to attract “fans downtown”. Color me skeptical, but I doubt it’s much of a factor. Does Target sell products and to attract people to the mall? No. Target does what it does to generate profits. The fact that customers may have to come to the mall to get to Target is coincidence.

The stadium gets used 81 times a year for baseball games. That means there’s 284 days a year that it stands empty and generates no cash flow. Why not make it into a winter sports park and generate some cash during the offseason? That’s why we have concerts and football games at ballparks, even if some ballparks are a bit cozy for a gridiron.

It’s certainly possible that getting people downtown is an actual goal since the stadium is owned by the city of Cleveland and is managed by the Gateway Economic Development Coporation, a public body. If so, they’d set a lower price to attract more people to the area than if all they cared about was customer traffic at the stadium.

The admission price for 2 hours of snow tubing at Progressive ($20) is higher than the price charged for two hours of snow tubing ($13) at our local ski “mountain” in south central Minnesota, Mount Kato. It’s also more expensive than 2 hours of tubing at Afton Alps ($16), a ski area just east of the Twin Cities. Tubing for two hours at Alpine Valley, a ski area 30 miles from Cleveland, costs $15. I’m no tubing price expert in any way, shape, or form, but $20 for tubing at Progressive seems a bit steep to be the result of an attempt to bring people downtown. Maybe it’s a novelty thing.

Lastly, is this a signal that the Indians are in financial trouble? Not at all. The stadium is going to be empty during the winter months regardless of team profitability. They might as well put it to some use.

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

Dallas Cowboys tight end Jason Witten (82) breaks a tackle attempt by New York Giants safety Deon Grant (34) during the second quarter of an NFL football game Nov. 14, in East Rutherford, N.J. The Cowboys won 33-20, despite having lost to the Giants during their previous match-up. (Kathy Willens / AP )

How did the Cowboys beat the spread?

By Skip Sauer, Guest blogger / 11.16.10

I’ve long been interested in the adjustment of expectations to changes in team performance. Several of my papers model point spreads in the betting market based on the market’s implied estimates of team strength. In the case of NFL betting, the season is so short that it is difficult for both the market and statistical models to adjust estimates of team strength based on team performances. Score differences are notoriously random and as a consequence it’s hard to tell what measure of luck or ability is responsible for any given outcome. Nevertheless, the market does adjust, and this year there is a particularly notable example in the form of the Dallas Cowboys. Here are the point spreads and scores to date for Cowboys games: 

These data bring home the obvious fact that the Cowboys’ performance has been way below expectations. Prior to Sunday’s game against the Giants they had failed to meet expectations (as defined by the point spread) in 7 of 8 games — bad enough to result in the departure of Coach Wade Phillips. But what really jumps out at me is the implied change in team strength between the two games against the NY Giants. Three weeks ago the Cowboys were favored by 3.5 points at home; yesterday they were 11.5 point dogs in NY. Estimates of the home field advantage imply its worth about a field goal, hence a 6 point adjustment is in order for swapping stadiums between games. Thus, if expectations had not adjusted and relative team strength had been constant, the prior spread implies that the Cowboys would have been 2.5 point dogs in New York for yesterday’s game.

This implies a 9 point adjustment in relative team strength between the two games. That’s a massive shift in the sentiment of bettors! Although it is possible in principle to attribute some fraction of this to an increase in the perceived strength of the Giants (who beat a mediocre Seattle team in between beating the Cowboys by six and getting whipped by them yesterday), most of the change surely rests with the Cowboys. The absence of QB Tony Romo, who was injured in the first game with the Giants, can account for another 3 points or so, but that would still leave us with a 6 point change in the perceived ability of the Cowboys over a matter of four games.

I can’t recall a similar collapse in the “price” of an NFL team in the point spread market. I’m tempted to break out my old point spread models to see what the “pre-collapse” market implies for Sunday’s game. Right now the Cowboys are favored by a touchdown over Detroit. It memory serves, Detroit has not won on the road since I was in high school. Although 7 points is a lot “to give” in the NFL, this spread suggests to me that the market is sticking with the recently revised view that the Cowboys are a poor team.

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

Reliant Stadium and the Astrodome, left, can be seen in this 2002 file photo. The Harris County-Houston Sports Authority has to pay their outstanding debt to JPMorgan Chase in five years instead of having until 2030 to pay it off. What made the extra fifteen years of debt so risky for the lender? (Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle / AP / File)

Houston stadium debt called in early

By Skip Sauer, Guest blogger / 11.13.10

The Houston Chronicle reports:

The Harris County-Houston Sports Authority is short $5 million on a debt service payment for Reliant Stadium due this week, prompting it to dip into its reserves to cover the bill.

It marks the first time the Sports Authority has had to draw on its $56 million reserve account to meet a debt obligation, signaling that the authority is not bringing in enough money to make its payments.

Those payments surged last year after the downgrade of its bond insurer and the subsequent demand by JPMorgan that the authority pay off in five years debt that had been due by 2030.

Simultaneously, the authority’s income has declined. More than half its $72 million in annual receipts come from hotel-motel occupancy taxes and car rental taxes. The economic downturn has reduced how much the authority takes in from those sources.

Sports Authority board chairman J. Kent Friedman described the problem as a short-term “cash-flow crunch.”

This has the makings of a really interesting story, one worth digging in to and getting the facts. JP Morgan (Chase) is surely acting within its contractual rights in demanding the early payoff, but it is surprising to me that they’d actually take that step. Are stadium tax revenues ten years out really so risky that forcing the authority to use its reserves makes sense for Morgan? In a sense the answer must be yes, otherwise the Stadium Authority could enter into a contract with a re-insurance firm (although the problem there may be in the re-insurance market and not with stadium revenues per se).

Mr. Friedman is adopting an “everything is hunky-dory” posture, stating that “the community will be a lot better off if we can pay these bonds off early.” This begs the question of why they sold long term bonds in the first place, of course. And there appear to be both age-old and recent issues hiding under the rug:

The debt challenges arise as county leaders consider pricey plans to revive or raze the vacant Astrodome, the Sports & Convention Corp. seeks $5 million from the maker of Reliant’s roof to recover expenses resulting from Hurricane Ike damage and the authority is negotiating with the Houston Dynamo over the terms of a lease on a publicly owned soccer stadium.

The tendency for teams to leave their digs before the debt has been paid off has been noted here before. The $32 million owed on the Astrodome (from an original debt of $27m!) may be a worrisome sign to lenders. See also “Muni Bond Watch Turns to Sports Facilities.”

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

Argentina's Sergio Aguero (16) scored his first goal as Brazil's Renan, left, and Marcelo defend during a men's soccer semifinal game at the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Of the 90 matchups between the two titans, each country has 23 wins, 23 losses, and 33 ties. Both teams will be looking to end the tie when they face off in Qatar on Nov. 17. (Ricardo Mazalan / AP / File)

Brazil vs. Argentina: Can economic principles apply to soccer games?

By Liam Lenten, Guest blogger / 11.12.10

Bitter football enemies Argentina and Brazil (combined 7-time World Champions) square-off yet again in a friendly next Wednesday. The match is in (of all places) Doha – since the match coincides with the final evaluation of Qatar’s ‘no expense spared’ 2022 FIFA World Cup bid, it is hard to imagine the reasons for the choice of location are anything other than economic! It will be the 90^th all-time meeting between the two giants of South America, with the previous 89 failing to separate them, at 33 wins apiece and 23 draws (Argentina are ahead slightly on goals scored, 143-137), though Brazil have had the better of the results in recent times. The game will also be a useful tune-up for both sides ahead of next year’s Copa América, hosted on this occasion by the Argentines.

Owing to my girlfriend being from Buenos Aires, one’s loyalties in this game are cast clearly in favor of La Albiceleste. However, I have recently been working on testing an old myth that it is unwise tactically to score too early in the game when playing against Brazil. The underlying intuition here is that doing so merely makes the Brazilian players angry (waking the sleeping giant), giving them extra incentive to attack and score freely thereafter as a ‘lesson’ to the opposition. This is not a frivolous applied microeconomic exercise, as it provides further evidence about the choice of timing of effort exertion by an underdog in a finite-length bilateral (but asymmetric) industry contest against a more favoured opponent, drawing upon inspiration from Avinash Dixit’s seminal 1987 piece in American Economic Review.

Despite an ardent belief that this myth is well-known to many fans of the game (at least in the Anglo-sphere), finding hard-source material validating it is proving more difficult than imagined. The only successes thus far are a quote in the 2000 autobiography by former Liverpool and Scotland centre-back Alan Hansen, as well as an old video of an SBS1 TV (Australia) telecast of a 1997 Confederations Cup group-stage match, where the English commentator states it explicitly.

If anyone knows off-hand of any citeable source on this one, please share with TSE readers via the comment section above. For the record, using data from 267 full ‘A’ internationals involving the Seleção between 1993 and 2010, the myth is found to be, in the words of Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman: ‘totally busted’!

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

Jockey Corey Brown (right) powers to victory in the Melbourne Cup on his horse Shocking ahead of Kerrin McEvoy on Crime Scene in the November 2009 race. Estimates of lost productivity this year from workers watching the race on company time have reached Australian $1 billion. (William West/AFP/Getty Images/Newscom/File)

Big sporting events hurt productivity? No!

By Skip Sauer, Guest blogger / 11.01.10

Among the sports-related economic nonsense that gets tossed about in the media are calculations of “lost productivity” associated with things like the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Here’s the latest instance, on one of the great days in Australian horse racing, the Melbourne Cup:

While Melbourne Cup day is a public holiday in Melbourne, time taken off by workers across Australia could be costing the nation about $1 billion in lost productivity, according to a new survey.

The survey, by recruitment firm Ranstad, found that almost half the employees it surveyed took more than three-and-a-half hours off work on Melbourne Cup Day.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures indicated about 11.2 million people were currently in full-time work in Australia, earning on average $31.40 an hour.

“If our results are representative of Australian businesses, we could be losing about $1 billion in the afternoon of the Cup,” Ranstad chief executive Deb Loveridge said in a statement.

The figures are based on the survey’s calculations that there are about 31 million hours in lost productivity on Cup Day.

The problem with these calculations is that we don’t live to work, we work to live better! Economic theory interprets the $1 billion in lost output associated with the Melbourne Cup as a lower bound on the value that Australians place on the occasion. Otherwise they wouldn’t choose to forgo work and take in the races. Economics may be referred to as the “dismal science,” but in this case a proper understanding of economics reveals that the alleged cost, or loss, or what have you, gives us a sense of how valuable the Melbourne Cup is to the many people who take time away from work to enjoy it.

If you read the newspaper story, it seems that the creator of the figure, Ms. Loveridge, gets the idea that the benefits exceed the costs. But selling papers requires a negative spin I suppose, hence the title of the piece: “The race that costs the nation.” Ugh!

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

Cye Fink, left, and Tim Hartley have a group meeting with their Upward Sports flag-football team at Bethany Baptist Church in South Salem, Ore. on Oct. 6. The coaches incorporate scripture to help the children learn life lessons. When professional leagues, instead of local groups like this, play too large a role in developing young athletes, emotional and moral growth can be sacrificed to skills acquisition. (Elida S. Perez / Statesman Journal / AP)

How we (fail to) nurture young talent

By Skip Sauer, Guest blogger / 10.28.10

Today’s WSJ has a review of the book, Play Their Hearts Out, by SI reporter George Dohrman. The book examines the world of elite youth basketball in the U.S.

I’m not alone in believing that elite youth sports are a problematic institution in the U.S., but I may be in the minority in thinking that our professional leagues share some of the blame. The key factor is that the age floor on players in the NBA shunts off youth development to people who don’t have the basketball and managerial skills to work in the big leagues or the colleges. Dohrman’s book chronicles the results, focusing on the activities of a club coach whose ethics seem dubious, and a young superstar whose game fails to develop, perhaps due to coaching methods which have other objectives in mind.

In contrast to the NBA, the English system has no age floor and allows professional clubs to develop talent themselves. Thus, we have seen 17 year olds like Jack Wilshire and Josh McEachran play for Arsenal and Chelsea in EPL matches in recent seasons. I doubt that either player would have progressed as well in the American system. Moreover, concern with reputation and the glare of the media spotlight induces the big clubs to provide more than just athletic training, an aspect of the problem that the clubs described in Dohrman’s book fail miserably.

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

Football players are taught to keep their heads up during a tackle, and not use their helmets as battering rams, as head shots all-too-easily lead to spinal or brain injury. Here, Rutgers defensive tackle Eric LeGrand (52) is hit hard by Army's Malcolm Brown (23) as he tries to make the tackle during the second half of an Oct. 16 football game, in East Rutherford, N.J. He remains paralyzed. Should serious injury be dismissed as 'just part of the game'? (Mel Evans / AP )

Do head shots need to be 'part of the game'?

By Brian Goff, Guest blogger / 10.20.10

The anticipated move by the NFL to use suspensions to penalize (some) and deter “head shots” to players has already generated substantial feedback. On ESPN Monday Night Steve Young, Trent Dilfer, and Matt Millen seemed ready to deliver a head shot to Roger Goodell for consideration of such a thing. Their reasoning — football is a “violent game,” “your taking away the physicality,” “this is what fans want to see.” The banality of their comments eerily remind me of scenes from Rollerball (for those alive in the 70s) or Running Man (8os) and at cross purposes with the kind of vilification of the “play-at-any-cost” mentality in North Dallas Forty (film and book).

Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel provides a much more balanced and thoughtful discussion of the issues. As he notes, fines just don’t raise the price high enough to deter overly violent actions. He quotes former NFL safety and heavy hitter Rodney Harrison from NBC’s Sunday night broadcast:

“You didn’t get my attention when you fined me five grand, 10 grand, 15 grand,” Harrison said. “You got my attention when I got suspended, and I had to get away from my teammates, and I disappointed my teammates from not being there.”

Wetzel observes that finding the right balance of deterrence without overly restraining players won’t be easy. Protections for QBs show that, where the protections sometimes make a defensive lineman’s job almost impossible. Nonetheless, the delicacy and difficulty of the balance should not keep the league from trying to extend protections to vulnerable players from very dangerous actions. At one time a Jack Tatum or two roamed the NFL. Now, every team has a Tatum-wannabe or two with dangerous hits repeated several times each Sunday.

I’ll readily admit, this is a visceral issue with me and not purely analytical. As a high school player, I witnessed a rival team send their 225 pound, All-State defensive tackle to nail our kicker (a good size guy) on the opening kickoff (this came in vogue for a few years in the mid 1970s long before the Buddy Ryan-Cowboys incident). The player delivered an unexpected, devastating blow to our kicker just as his foot came back to the ground. Our kicker staggered to his feet. Their player was carted off the field 20 minutes later, paralyzed from a broken neck. Just an unfortunate consequence of a violent game? It was sickening, and even though “legal” by the rules at the time, utterly stupid. It was violence for violence and intimidation — their coach wanted to “send a message.” He wanted the kicker to think about the next kick, just as these hits are meant to deter future receptions over the middle. He sent a message alright — that he was an idiot. The player delivering the hit made it dangerous to himself by leading with the crown of his helmet (as in the DeSean Jackson hit), but even without this, it was a cheap shot on a defenseless player. If that’s “part of the game,” why not change the game?

I have no doubt that some fans want to see these ferocious hits. A few probably even enjoy seeing players knocked out or staggering off the field — should leagues pander to that? Some NHL fans want to see fights. Leagues have to determine their stance on such matters. Personally, I’m siding with Goodell on this. Should current and former players (like Millen, Young, and Dilfer) carry weight. Players input should be heard. A strong case can be made, however, that an outside force like the commissioner needs to set the bounds. There are substantial internal political problems (just as with the steroid issue). Majority voting is no panacea. Wide receivers bear most of the brunt from these shots, but make up only a small voting block. Among current and former football players, even ones who may cringe at some of the shots, there is a high level of “this is football” machismo. Fraternities, of all sorts, usually defend hazing even when it’s dangerous as part of some rite of passage and can use external constraints.

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

San Francisco 49ers head coach Mike Singletary reacts on the sideline in the first quarter of the Oct. 17 NFL football game against the Oakland Raiders in the San Francisco rain. His players haven't given him the extraordinary effort he put forth as a Hall of Fame player. Will he more likely get them there by yelling or encouraging? (Paul Sakuma / AP / File)

Singletary v. Madden on management

By Brian Goff, Guest blogger / 10.19.10

The San Francisco 49ers won their first game yesterday, beating their even more hapless cross-Bay rivals, the Oakland Raiders. The Niners’ head coach, Mike Singletary, took over from Mike Nolan in 2008 amid much media buzz. Some immediately expect any “fiery” coach’s intensity to be the wonder drug. Early on, this piece by SFGate’s Scott McCloughan questioned the certainty of this result, noting the implosions of the intensity-is-everything coaches like Mike Ditka in New Orleans or Rod Marinelli in Detroit and the success of Tom Coughlin after ditching the “Colonel Coughlin” routine in New York. From an economic, strip-things-down-to-their-essence perspective, McCloughan goes right to the key variable in the coach’s management style and the likely source of his downfall — player effort:

Like many Hall of Fame players who have become head coaches, Singletary’s pedigree doesn’t mean he’ll be good at this new job. In most cases, Hall of Fame players fail miserably as coaches. Why? Because their players’ effort and intensity will never match their own.

Where, in my view, McCloughlan along with admirers of Singletary (when he took the job) miss it is that the focus on effort is Singletary’s problem, not the player’s. Effort matters. It matters a lot. In every workplace I’ve experienced, from concrete construction to higher ed, effort mattered and differed among employees. The whole team production story of management’s role (Alchian & Demsetz, 1972 American Economic Review) focuses on the solution to the effort problem. Most any coach with a long record of success has effective means of maintaining high effort levels. Some may do so out of fear and intimidation. Others (e.g. Bill Belichick) do it by casting off players who aren’t rowing hard enough. Some use player-leaders to promote a high-effort culture, or some combination of these methods.

Effort management is not the end of the story, however. One could view almost everything that Mike does as tilted toward a myopic fixation on effort and “sending signals” to team members along these lines. In his first game he sends talented but immature tight end Vernon Davis to the showers for a silly unsportsmanlike penalty. Ok, message sent. Then, he drops his pants in the locker room to crudely illustrate how the team was “getting it tail whipped.” Yes, coach, we get it. In a later game, he used up timeouts to pull his defense over and lecture them. Now, it’s getting silly and actually costly for the team (they needed those timeouts later). This season, the “it’s all about effort” business has continued, most recently with the tongue-lashing of QB Alex Smith on the sideline. Here’s John Madden’s commentary:

“That’s really not part of coaching, that’s sometimes I worry about that. I see youth football and I see high school football and coaches yelling at players and I cringe when I see it. I think people get the picture that’s what coaching is and believe me, that’s not what coaching is … “You have to coach, you have to teach, you have to strategize, you have to encourage. “That’s what coaching is, not the opposite.”

Madden gives a nice synopsis of the varied elements that go into coaching/managing. My guess is that while each team needs some ongoing “effort management,” only a small number of teams have real problems in this regard, and among those, problems arise as losses mount. Given the near equal talent distribution in the NFL and a high level of effort across the board, the items highlighted by Madden become the discriminating managerial traits.

Of course, all the maniacal activity by some coaches may speak more to indulgence of their own personalities (a type of effort or “shirking” problem on its own) that I discussed in my 2007 X & Y Management post and how screaming managers could learn a lot from Tony Dungy.

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

Chicago Cubs starting pitcher Carlos Zambrano rubs his hand after trying to make a barehanded catch on a ball hit by Houston Astros' Brian Bogusevic in the second inning of a baseball game Saturday, Oct. 2, in Houston. Zambrano, a sports star at the peak of his pitching career, has said he'll retire when his contract runs out in 2012. (Pat Sullivan/AP)

Why do some sports stars retire at their peak?

By Phil Miller, Guest blogger / 10.10.10

The law of supply says that when the price of a good rises, all else equal, the quantity supplied of that good also rises. Applied to labor markets, the more people are paid, the more they work. There’s no surprise there. But there is a case where the law of supply seems to be violated in labor markets: the case of the backwards-bending supply curve.

The economist models the decision to work as a trade-off between working and leisure. Work and leisure are substitute uses of a person’s time, and his income is the implicit price of taking leisure. As a person’s income rises, it becomes more costly not to work, and the person responds by working more. This is the substitution effect of an income increase.

But leisure can also be thought of as some kind of a normal good. As a person’s income rises, all else equal, he would respond by taking more leisure. This is the income effect, and it at least partially offsets the substitution effect.

In a person’s mind, the income and substitution wage a constant battle. When the law of supply holds, the substitution effect outweighs the income effect. But as a person’s income rises past some threshold, he feels his income is sufficiently high to allow him to, in effect, “purchase” more leisure time, and he responds by working less. Past this threshold, the income effect outweighs the substitution effect.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of examples where a star athlete has retired while still at the top of his game, and men who may be examples of the backwards bending supply curve: Tiki Barber and Barry Sanders.

Another one has recently reiterated his desire to retire at the end of his current contract is the Cubs’ Carlos Zambrano (fyi, the link also contains embedded audio for a vlog, so readers may want to turn down their speakers).

Enjoying his best run of pitching in more than two years, the always-controversial Carlos Zambrano said after winning his ninth game of the season Wednesday that he will retire when his contract ends after the 2012 season.

“I told you the other day, this will be my last contract,” Zambrano said. “This will be my last contract. I won’t be playing anymore. I don’t want to play anymore. Life is short. Sometimes you miss things with your family, like very important people, like my daughter. Sometimes you miss things in life because of baseball that you shouldn’t miss. I want to be there any moment for my daughter and my family. Baseball takes a lot of time away from us.”

If he follows through on his current plan to retire, Zambrano (aka Z and The Big Z) will no-doubt be criticized by fans and in the media. But this decision is really nothing new. Is Z the first person to take early retirement? Besides, who can criticize a man for wanting to spend more time with his family after his contract runs out especially one as wealthy as The Big Z?

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.