Buyer's remorse

 I feel for Freddie Freeman. I do.

What I don't do is understand him.

Look, I get that when you play for one team in one city for a pile of years, you form attachments, and a piece of your heart grows there you can't uproot with a neutron bomb. So I understand what happened last week, when his new team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, went back to Atlanta for the first time since Freeman took the money and ran, and Freddie spent most of the series bawling like a baby.

He never really wanted to leave Atlanta. That much is obvious, and that's probably going to tick off his Dodgers teammates, who will no doubt say "Hey, what about us?" I fact, Clayton Kershaw already sounded off about this, telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that while Freeman's homecoming was cool and all, he hopes Freddie doesn't consider the Dodgers "second fiddle."

To which I'd respond, "Welcome to free agency, Clayton." Teams no longer buy a player's unswerving loyalty, only his services. It's a big ol' mercenary world out there now, and has been since, I don't know, Wade Boggs left the Red Sox to go play for the Yankees (to name but one example). And in a mercenary world, where everything is about buying and selling, occasionally there will be buyer's remorse. 

This is pretty clearly what's happening here. So much so, that Freeman has apparently fired the agent who worked the Dodgers deal for him.

It seems his negotiating team overplayed its hand by issuing the Braves an ultimatum, to which the Braves responded by going out and signing another player to take Freeman's place. Which closed the door on Freeman returning.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "If Freeman really didn't want to leave Atlanta, why didn't he tell his negotiating team that? Why didn't he just say, 'Look, I want to play for the Braves, make it happen'? Doesn't his agent work for him?"

Well ... yeah. And that's the part where I don't understand. 

But, hey, maybe it works differently in these big-deal deals. Seems like it shouldn't, though. Seems like all Freeman should have to do is tell his agent what to do, and the agent does it.

In which case, if he's not where he wants to be, it's kinda his fault. Much as I feel for him.