Oh the horror. The average salary for professional baseball players went down and this hurts everyone. How will we explain to children why players have less bling-bling when they for autographs? Who wants to see their hero driving away after not signing a ball for a kid in a wheelchair when he only has 20-inch wheels? How do you tell a little kid that the reason the shortstop hasn’t been on the news is becasue afford the cocaine that led to his “news worthy” behavior?
The next thing you know the players won’t be able to afford performance enhancing drugs.
My thoughts exactly when I saw that headline. Makes me wonder what it must’ve been like when baseball players used to have to get an off-season job to support themselves.
NOOOOO!!! Say it ain’t SO! Before you know it, ticket prices will go down and people will be able to go to the games for less than $100! Will NO ONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!
Just occurred to me, this reported after he who signed the largest contract ever in pro-sports because he “wanted to win” (and then had his team finish last every year), A-Rod, took a big pay cut. Coincidence? I really don’t know, it probably doesn’t have much to do with it, but it could be related.
While you’re enjoying making fun of the baseball players, keep this in mind: the income for the industry that is baseball did not go down. The salaries of baseball players did.
This means that the extraordinarily rich men who own baseball teams are now making even more money.
You’re castigating the millionaires who work for the money, and letting the billionaires off scot-free.
Why do people get so angry about baseball player salaries? Do you get incensed when some name actor gets paid $10 million to do a movie? That’s a heck of a lot less work than playing baseball.
I seriously doubt it. The article specifically mentioned that A-Rod’s paycut figure that applied to the calculation was 100k. Since his salary is still above 20m, it probably didn’t have any noticeable effect.
I still don’t understand why people harbor such animosity toward athletes for their paychecks. If you could do something that a million people per year would buy tickets to witness, don’t you think you should reap some of the rewards?
Actors, musicians and athletes actually earn their money. Would it be better if all the profits went to the studios/networks, record companies and owners? Say you are Barry Bonds, and you get traded. The new team you go to experiences three things: average attendance at the 80 home games goes up by 10,000 people, away games by 5,000 people, and television ratings go up by 500,000 people, driving up advertising revenue. Didn’t you, and you alone, generate that revenue? Shouldn’t you get a fairly sizeable chunk of that pie? (Not sure about the ad space, but the 120,000 extra tickets sold adds up pretty damn quick.) Not to even mention merchandizing.
The Barry Bonds example is extreme isolation, but all athletes, to some extent, have the same effect.
