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My second biggest pet peeve is people who complain about how much money star athletes make. (No. 1 is poor sidewalk etiquette: You know, those people who walk slowly and won't get out of the way, and those who violate the stand right, walk left rule on moving sidewalks at the airport.)

The next time someone asks why Alex Rodriguez makes more per at-bat than a public school teacher makes in a year I'm going to scream. It's supply and demand, folks. A-Rod gets the money because he generates it. Sadly, 40,000 people don't shell out 40 bucks each to watch teachers instruct every day.

Having said that, would someone explain to me how Adonal Foyle is getting a five-year, $41 million contract from the Warriors? He's been with Golden State since 1997, and he's never been a full-time starter. He averaged 3.1 points per game last year. He's a nice guy, a smart guy, but his salary is ridiculous, and it makes me want to curse my parents for being short. If I find out he's also one of those people who stands on the left side of a moving sidewalk I'm going to drown myself in my bathtub. ...

My beloved Indians have four All-Stars. They have three of the best young starting pitchers in baseball -- C.C. Sabathia, Cliff Lee and Jake Westbrook -- and a solid stick at every position. So why is Cleveland looking up at the White Sox and the Twins, who have two All-Stars combined, in the standings? Because its bullpen is awful. Jose Jimenez's tenure as closer had me doing an Internet search to see if I could locate Jim Kern and convince him to come out of retirement. (The Amazing Emu, as he was known, was a bearded workhorse.) But the ninth inning is not the problem. Far more games are won and lost in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings. But when the Tribe went into cost-cutting mode a few years ago, the Indians lost the luxury of being able to keep guys such as Paul Shuey and Steve Karsay -- two of my all-time favorite players. For the most part they weren't closers, but they were solid, dependable guys. If you added them (when they were in their prime) and a decent lefty to that staff the Tribe would be four games up. The good news is a team can upgrade its middle-relief corps at the trading deadline without breaking the bank or parting with top prospects. If GM Mark Shapiro can get some help, the Indians are going to be tough down the stretch. ...

Great book: Blue Blood by Edward Conlon. He's a New York City cop who also happens to be a fantastic writer. Great stories of the job as well as his cop-filled family. ...

Check this out. Chiquita is working on a strawberry-flavored banana. You know, the reason some people hate bananas has nothing to do with the taste -- it's the texture. So good thinking: Let's take a delicious fruit and make it taste like someone already chewed it for you. Those things will be flying off the shelves. ...

There's been some discussion in blogs past about Ben Stiller. Granted, the only range the guy shows is when he follows up a role in which he plays a high-strung, goofy, neurotic guy with a really high-strung, goofy, neurotic guy. (I'm watching Happy Gilmore right now -- he even does the psycho bit in cameos.) But occasionally it really works. I'm referring, of course, to his finest role ever: Mr. Furious in Mystery Men. What a great film, perhaps the most unfairly maligned movie ever. (William H. Macy's line, "We struck down evil with the mighty sword of teamwork and the hammer of not bickering ... " slays me every time.) The scene in which Stiller stomps on the roof of Geoffrey Rush's car screaming, "The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!" is the finest in a long line of otherwise tedious over-the-top Stiller outbursts. ...

Bechtel out.

Mark Bechtel edits Scorecard for Sports Illustrated.