The New York Yankees swooped in Tuesday and hooked prized free agent Mark Teixeira, reaching agreement with the first baseman on an eight-year contract worth $180 million, three sources involved in the negotiations said. The agreement, which is subject to a physical, includes a signing bonus of about $5 million paid out over the first three years of the contract, no opt-out clause and a complete no-trade provision, the sources said.... The contract will pay Teixeira, who made it clear he wanted to make a decision on where to play next season and beyond by Christmas, an average of $22.5 million per season. Boston's offer to Teixeira was for $168 million over eight years, an average of $21 million a year.
First of all, let me take my hat off to Mark Teixeira, who just got himself a Christmas present unlike anything us mere mortals will ever experience. While I certainly don't begrudge him his success, this sort of financial excess has taken me right to the edge of what I can reasonably stomach. How can Major League Baseball expects fans who bring home $40,000 per year to be able to relate to players who make more than rolling out of bed? When a lineup such as the Yankees is studded with players who in some cases make more than $15 million per year, you have to understand that things (like our priorities, f'rinstance?) are horribly out of whack. In a world where teachers and nurses are lucky to make $50,000 per year, how can we justify baseball players making 15, 20, even 25 million per year?
NO ONE is worth $22.5 million per year...no matter what that person does or how well he does it. Hell, I wouldn't pay God $22.5 million per year...assuming He even exists.
Don't get me wrong; I love baseball. I've always admired the beauty, the skill, and the smell of grass. I love baseball stadia, and when I travel to a city, the first thing I do is to check the schedule to see if the local nine has a game scheduled. The game continues to fascinate me, but I have some serious philosophical problems with a sport whose economic structure and business model is so thoroughly out of step with it's fan base. I'm not saying that baseball isn't a business and that teams and players shouldn't be allowed to maximize their profit potential, but when the New York Yankees can commit to $423.5 million in salary over the past month (to three players)...well, it would seem that the reality train has long since let the station.
And here's the other part of that equation: baseball's economic structure is so thoroughly (&^%$# up that you have teams like the Yankees literally trying to buying championships while teams like Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Florida are almost literally living off the crumbs that hit the floor. The Yankees financial success is largely due to the reality that they play in New York. Let's face it; if George Steinbrenner owned the Florida Marlins, Major League Baseball would be living a much differently reality. As much as I love baseball, the financial imbalance has created a situation which risks alienating fans like me. Yes, I know that the Tampa Bay Rays made it to the World Series last year; every rule has an exception. Money cannot buy a championship, but wouldn't you rather take your chances with a $300 million payroll instead of a $15 million payroll?
How can the lords of the game possibly expect those fans who arrive at game in a 2002 Ford Focus to relate to those players who arrived in a 2008 Cadillac Escalade? Can you say "disconnect"??
Major League Baseball needs to get it's house in order. Without a salary cap, or some other method of leveling the playing field, the game will become even more of a mockery than it already, with most of the league serving as barely-competitive fodder for the five or six richest teams. Unless Satan Commissioner Bud Selig can display the cojones necessary to impose some sense of fairness and order on the system, Major League Baseball will descend slowly into the realm occupied by sham "sports" such as professional wrestling. And the fans that they alienate along the way will gravitate to...oh, I don't know...professional gluttony or full-contact butter churning...because in the end, exactly nothing will change.
