Issue Date: 3/2/09
Baseball salaries need caps
Are players being paid more than they're worth?
By Matt Wadleigh
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Player Alex Rodriguez signed a 10-year, $250 million contract with the Yankees just a few years ago as well.
There are many other major leaguers who have contracts in the hundreds of millions of dollars like this, such as CC Sabathia.
Baseball is not so demanding and stressful that these players should be making $20 million a year. Many professional players make a ridiculous amount of money for what they do.
We are suffering through an economic crisis - a depression - and many of these owners are dishing out contracts to players where they make $20 million a year to play a game.
They are not getting paid $20 million a year to give heart transplants, or to run the country, or even to ensure our country's safety. They are playing baseball.
Major League Baseball is the only professional major sport without a salary cap. The absence of a salary cap lets the owners spend as much money as they want, or, in some cases, as much money as they themselves can spend. It does seem rather easy to assume that the more money spent, the more championships you get. This is true at times: just look at the Yankees, Dodgers and Red Sox.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Rockies, the Diamondbacks, and the Rays have all been to World Series within the past eight years and they have three of the lowest payrolls in baseball. But with the Yankees, Tigers and Mets having a combined payroll of $485 million, it really makes us think about something: Why is there no salary cap in baseball?
Hockey, football and basketball have a salary cap, making competition a little easier, since they all have to spend under a certain amount. The New York Yankees have a payroll of $209 million in 2008 alone. Rodriguez made $25 million, a number that not even the world's best doctors earn annually.
Someone needs to do something about the spending of money on major league baseball players. The commissioner and the league owners need to have a meeting and have a salary cap placed on this sport.
It is ridiculous that the owners would sign one player to a contract for eight years, where they would pay him $181 million. That is only one player: that still leaves 24 to pay.
Instead of doing that and signing that one player, managers could sign maybe six or seven other players with the same amount of money. The Yankees, some would say, have bought championships, winning 28 national titles in their history. But no amount of trophies is worth squandering that much money every season.
Millions and millions of dollars are being cut from the California education and schools, and these owners are paying a player $22 million a year to play baseball for six months. Baseball is quickly becoming a game of money. America's pastime is becoming all about the cash, and it is getting out of hand.
That salary cap needs to be talked about and should seriously be considered.
If not, then America's pastime may just become America's National Bank.
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