Johnny Damon and the Pork Chop Analogy

A lady walks into a butcher shop and asks: "How much are the pork chops?"

The butcher says: "$1.89 a pound."

"$1.89?" The woman asks in shock. "I can get them down the street for $1.69."

"So who sent for you?" the butcher asks. "Go down the street."

"They don't have any pork chops."

"If I didn't have any pork chops, I'd sell 'em to you for $1.49 a pound."

Johnny Damon's strategy for negotiating a contract this offseason has been the inverse of the lady looking for pork chops.

Through his agent, Scott Boras, Damon tells the Yankees he wants a multi-year contract equal to last year's salary of $13 million.

And Yankee General Manager Brian Cashman must have asked, "What other offers do you have?"

And Boras would have said, "Well, we're negotiating with several other teams." This had to tell Cashman that there were no other offers.

But Cashman reportedly even offered to pay Johnny $14 million over two years.

And Boras turned it down.

So Cashman asked again, "Do you have any other offers?"

And at that point Cash didn't even have to wait for an answer because there obviously was not another butcher shop open in town.

The law of supply and demand still exists.

If you want to buy something cheap, you better have more than one place to buy.

And if you want somebody to give you a whole lot of money for what you have to sell, you better have more than one buyer.