12/22/24
April 08, 2004
Decline in baseball salaries: : It looks like some players might have to sell the vacation home in Palm Springs. Poor bastards. Maybe taking up a collection is in order?
Hey. I don't blame them. I just have no sympathy for them.
posted by sixpacker at 06:45 PM on April 08, 2004
No sympathy at all. 469 AB, 14 HR, 52 RBI, 8 SB, .235 AVG. = $11,850,000 in 2003 And he's back for over $8 million this year. Look, everyone loves to gripe about player salaries and everyone loves to whine about greedy owners, but what it really comes down to is the gripers and whiners. Each of us spends an extraordinary amount of time watching, listening to, reading about, playing, & writing about sports. We come here. We go to ESPN, Sportsline, & MLB. We watch SportsCenter enough to keep it on seven times a day. We flip from YES or NESN to ESPN2 or FoxSports between innings. We play fantasy sports. Our ridiculous interest, and nothing else, generates a proportionately ridiculous amount of money. It's just something to remember the next time your shocked to see that Bobby Higginson is raking in an eight figure salary. If people had this much interest in molecular biology, Dr. David Stalker would be wearing bling-bling and driving an Escalade.
posted by 86 at 08:12 AM on April 09, 2004
Hey. I don't blame them either. But I can be envious and roll my eyes with contempt when they compare themselves to a working man and make comments like the infamous Pete Incaviglia: "People think baseball players make $3 million and $4 million a year. They don't realize that most of us only make $500,000." They get the salaries they get because they are the elitist of the elite, and because supply and demand of and for elite ball players is what it is. But fans have the right not to like it, and fans have the right not to support it. What they don't have is any ability to affect it, unless they stay away en masse, which will never, ever happen. But what is really happening is that the elitist of the elite are commanding more, so a striation is happening between the best and the rookies/utility guys. Which has already happened in basketball and football to some extent.
posted by vito90 at 08:14 AM on April 09, 2004
I quit baseball cold turkey during the '94 strike. I haven't given MLB a dollar since, and this little downward blip won't change my feelings one iota. More than any other sport, the myopia of the Players' Association and the upper-class of players (as opposed to the rookies & utility guys, who are still doing well, just not necessarily set-up-the-grandkids well) about how astonishingly good they've got it versus the rest of society is, to me at least, revolting.
posted by chicobangs at 09:25 AM on April 09, 2004
It's funny how we all rant and rave about professional athletes and their salaries, but you don't hear too many people complaining about the salaries/bonuses of CEOs. To me, that's more disgusting than anything a player can make.
posted by grum@work at 10:20 AM on April 09, 2004
Actually grum, that is a good point, and one I thought about making, but decided it might be too off-topic. I am just as cynical about CEO salaries. I grant that there may be feasible economic realities driving the escalation of them, but I hate it with the same white-hot intensity I hate escalating player salaries. Two peas from the same pod, IMHO.
posted by vito90 at 10:25 AM on April 09, 2004
Yes. You are correct. We should hate those players for wanting to get paid as much as possible. Perhaps a return to the original system where the owners provided players with an honest wage for an honest day's work. Since you bought into the owners BS about greedy players, show me the resulting drop in ticket prices.