LaRoche Turns Down 17 Million Dollars

The San Francisco Giants are trying to acquire former Pirate Adam LaRoche, however, it has turned out to not be as easy as they thought it might be. They offered him a 2-year contact worth 17 million dollars, and he turned it down. Yes, LaRoche is a good left-handed bat (at least when he's not in a Pirates uniform), and he is one of the top first basemen on the free agent market, but I think 17 mill is much more than he's worth. He finished 2009 with a .277 batting average with 25 bombs and 83 RBI. He really did turn it on after he left Pittsburgh though, hitting 13 homers and batting in 43 in his last 63 games. But still, he turned down 17 million? The Giants have backed off for the time being and may not make LaRoche another offer, which would probably make me happy. You know what else would make me happy? If I had 17 million dollars. This got me thinking of all the things you could buy with 17 million dollars... so here's a mini-list.

• 2 bleacher seats to every Pirate home game for the next 42,500 seasons.
• 31% of Tiger Woods' house (cost $54 million to build).
• 340 2010 Cadillac Escalades with angry-wife insurance.
• 1% of Yankee Stadium (cost $1.5 billion to build).
• 1,133,333 Tom Gorzelanny flipping-you-the-bird bobblehead dollars
• 41 seasons of Andy LaRoche's services, counting by his current salary.
• 340,000 pairs of Wrangler camouflage pants
• 226,000 private pitching lessons from John Dopson, who could probably teach you how to throw an Ephus.
• 16,037,735 junior bacon cheeseburgers, and if you were willing to spend an extra dollar last month, you could accompany every burger you buy this year with a junior frosty for no extra cost.
• An Andrew McCutchen jersey for yourself and 66,000 of your closest friends.

Now if you don't want to spend the money on yourself, you could do some good deeds with it, such as...

• Covering up half a percent of the money spent thanks to Obama's stimulus package.
• Pay back the Pirates the money they flushed down the toilet thanks to the signing of Matt Morris, and have a little bit left over to pay for that surgery Oliver Perez had to have after kicking his lawn cart.
• Donating it all to research on time travel, so maybe we could go back in time and not hire Dave Littlefield.