The Weav had the good fortune to be drafted by his local team during its greatest golden era. Having a brother who was traded, ran the free agency gauntlet and bounced around the country probably opened his eyes to many of the negatives of that process. If Jered Weaver learned a little from the travails of Jeff Weaver, you need only watch WTY's in-game emotion to know this guy is guided by feeling as much as logic. Reading Halos Heaven brand John Lackey "Benedict Arnold" might sway a ballplayer's emotions a bit, you never know. If you believe in the flaps of the butterfly wing creating tsunamis you are allowed to speculate as wildly.
At some level, once the money comes in, the importance of getting more is a matter of ego, of swagger, of the youthful alpha-male hunger for everyone to know you are number one. The word "respect" is bandied about a lot in professional sports. It has lost its meaning in a culture of classless braggadocio and secretive medicine. Do you really want to watch a game if it is revealed that Alex Rodriguez took the Shoeless Joe route after a particularly deep poker loss? But he got the most dough and cannot believe we have withheld our respect.
Respect is delivered through actions. Not by the team, the management or the players union. Respect comes from the fans. The estimates being offered is that a great 2012 would have yielded Weav $40 Million more than this current deal delivers. If you could put a price on the amount of respect that Weaver has earned with Sunday's contract extension, your estimate, gushingly fawning or cynically analytical, would only reveal more about you, not Jered Weaver.
And so call me mushy, slam me as out of touch with economic reality or dismiss "just another blogger", but I think and feel that with all the wisdom Weav has accrued and the money he has earned and the security the club has guaranteed and the respect this garners, it appears, at least to this biased lifelong Angels fan, that... in the end... Jered Weaver did it for Nick.