Porcello Signs

First-round pick Rick Porcello and the Tigers agreed to a four year, 7.3 million dollar Major League contract late yesterday evening. The article has all of the relevant details, including a brief sketch of the ins-and-outs of signing 18 year olds to MLB contracts as well as a delightfully bizarre use of the word "ironic". MLB.com correspondant Jason Beck writes, "His [Porcello's] advisor, Scott Boras, compared his talent to that of Josh Beckett when he was drafted out of high school in 1999. Ironically, current Tigers president and general manager Dave Dombrowski selected Beckett in the same role with the Florida Marlins."

I think the same GM giving huge signing bonuses and MLB deals to more than one high school pitcher isn't ironic at all, but it's been awhile since I was forced to deal with exact definitions of complicated literary terms like "irony". As I understand it though, a certain deviation from expectation is usually an important characteristic of irony. Dave Littlefield or Kevin Towers throwing a garbage bags full of million dollars bills at Porcello would be ironic.

Instead of arguing about whether or not this is a good thing, since the goodness of this thing seems largely an issue of perspective, I'd mostly like to add that I'm really looking forward to "Rick" becoming THE cool first name again. I don't think the United States has had a name that was so obviously a marker of badassery since, well, the last time the name "Rick" was cool, an era that ended in the late 80's. The young Mr. Porcello was born in late 1988, which means makes him a sort of once and future king of Rick-ness.

We're standing at an important moment in history.