According to a commenter on one of Rob Neyer’s latest posts (h/t to Rob's Tweet) there is speculation that Burnett’s committed to staying on the East Coast for family reasons. Burnett lives in Maryland in the offseason and, based on some of the provisions of his contracts with the Blue Jays, the team paid for limousine service for Burnett’s wife and children to drive the 8 hours from Baltimore to Toronto several times during his stint there. The speculation is that Burnett’s wife may be deathly afraid of flying, and playing on the East Coast allows him to get back to see his family more regularly, since they can’t come extreme distances to him. The Common Man has no idea whether this is true, nor if it is does he think that anyone in the Burnett family deserves any measure of criticism for their decisions.
What interests The Common Man is that this is in no way the first time that a fear of flying has potentially derailed a promising baseball career.
