01:21 AM EST on Thursday, March 23, 2006

Monday, Boston Red Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo was traded to the Cincinnati Reds.

Tuesday, Adam Vinatieri, one of the signature faces of the New England Patriots' three Super Bowl titles in the past five years, jumped to the Indianapolis Colts, amid cries that he jumped to the enemy, the football version of Johnny Damon going off to the Yankees.

What's the connection?

Maybe everything -- if you are trying to understand the hall of mirrors that's become the world of professional sports, that is.

So how could Vinatieri do this?

Isn't this just one more example of a money-grubbing athlete, where words like loyalty and family are just words in a musty old dictionary no one ever looks at anymore?

Isn't this just one more example of a greedy athlete betraying all the fans who idolize him, all that affection now as empty as yesterday's cheers?

How could he do this?

I offer you Arroyo.

Two months ago Arroyo took less money than he arguably could have gotten on the open market to sign a new contract with the Red Sox. He essentially did this for two reasons: he loved Boston and had recently bought a townhouse in the city, and he received assurances from the Red Sox that he was not in their immediate trade plans. So Arroyo signed, against the advice of his agent no less, and Monday found himself traded away to a place he didn't want to go, hometown discount or no hometown discount.

So what's the message here?

At the most obvious level this is a business, however much we fans tend to dismiss that. We like to think these are still the games we played as kids, the games we came of age with, that somehow professional sports are removed from the cruel realities of the marketplace. We like to think this is all about cheers, and root, root, root for the home team.

The players know better.

The days of most players growing old with their original teams is now as old fashioned as afternoon doubleheaders and "win one for the Gipper" pregame pep talks. Free agency has changed that. The huge money has changed that. Once upon a time no one knew how much money athletes made. Now it's as well-known as their stats, always in your face. Once upon a time we were able to look at pro sports through a child's eyes. It's almost impossible to do that anymore.

"The game is a business, man," Arroyo said Tuesday in Florida. "It's like playing a chess game and we're just pieces on the board, man. That's what the players are."

The unfortunate thing for him is it took him a little too long to understand that, to understand that when it was in the Red Sox interest to trade him it didn't mattter that two months ago he took the "hometown discount."

Not Vinatieri, though.

Then again, he's seen a lot of examples in the Patriots locker room the past few years. He's seen Drew Bledsoe lose his job because he got hurt and someone else came in and was better. He's seen Lawyer Milloy, Ty Law, Tebucky Jones, Damien Woody, Willie McGinest, David Givens, just to name the most high profile guys; all left New England for financial reasons, not necessarily for what they did on the field. All, at some level, were business decisions, some by the Patriots, some by the players themselves.

This is simply the way it is, a world without a whole lot of sentiment. That's the dirty little secret behind all those cheers and TV ratings, all the championship banners. Everyone looks out for their own self-interest, teams and athletes alike. To believe anything else is to also believe in the Easter Bunny.

Vinatieri undoubtledly knows this, knows that at 33 years old his years of making big money are like sand sifting through the hourglass. And this offer from the Colts is a multiyear contract with a $3.5-million signing bonus, money the Patriots simply were not going to give him.

Maybe it's that simple.

Three-point-five million may not be oodles of money in the glitzy world of the NFL, but in the real world Vinatieri is going to live in when his career is over, it's a lot of money.

We tend to gloss over that, too. We throw figures around in sports like it's all Monopoly money, like the figures somehow aren't real, that they somehow don't translate into personal bank accounts.

So Vinatieri is supposed to say no to the Colts' substantial offer because he's a New England icon? He's supposed to say no to the Colts even when the Patriots won't give him a similar offer? Not in the real world. Not anymore.

Hometown discount?

Loyalty?

Tell that to Bronson Arroyo.

SURVEY: Share your take on what Adam Vinatieri's decision to become a Colt means to the Patriots, at:

http://projo.com/adamvsurvey