A weighty issue?

If you're a Boston sports fan, you've most likely heard by now that the Red Sox have signed Curt Schilling for one more year.

As I am with all professional sports deals, I am appalled by the amount of money he will make in that one year -- more than most people will make in their lifetimes. His base salary will be $8 million, with an extra $3 million in performance incentives, and an extra $1 million if he receives even one vote for the Cy Young Award.

But I was interested to hear about an addition that Schilling himself made to the contract: a weight clause. He will have six weigh-ins throughout the season to ensure that he stays in shape. (I feel compelled to point out that he refers to them on his blog as "6 seperate weigh-ins," misspelling separate. But hey, he's a baseball player, not a writer). Of course, he will also receive an extra $2 million in weight-related incentives.

Schilling explains his reasoning for including the weight clause on his blog, 38pitches.com:

Given the mistakes I made last winter and into Spring Training I needed to show them I recognized that, and understood the importance of it. Being overweight and out of shape are two different things. I also was completely broad sided by the fact that your body doesn’t act/react the same way as you get older. Even after being told that for the first 39 years of my life.

Schilling has always struck me as a genuinely nice, family-oriented person (not that I know him personally...). I had heard it mentioned several times on the news that he and his wife wanted to stay in the Boston area because they thought the neighborhood they lived in was good for their children.

Now, it's nice to hear that Schilling is a health-conscious guy as well. I'm impressed not only that he wants to make an effort to stay in shape for the good of the team, but also that he would make it public knowledge. I hope he is successful in his weight loss or weight maintenance efforts. I don't know about Curt Schilling, but I would definitely try as hard as I could to stay in shape if two million dollars were coming my way as a reward.