Op Ed with Bob Branco – Major League Baseball Spends Foolishly
While most of us have to scrape and scramble in order to earn enough money to make ends meet, professional baseball athletes are allowed to make a salary that the rest of us can only dream about.
Let’s think about this. A Major League baseball player, given his talent level, experience, and the type of contract he may be entitled to, can make up to 20 million dollars a year! What could you do with 20 million dollars? You may not even know, because anything you may have dreamed about wouldn’t cost even close to that astronomical amount of money.
With that said, owners of professional ball teams, with the support of the players’ union, are allowed to spend millions of dollars in guaranteed contracts no matter what happens to the player during the contract. Now more than ever, a lot of players who make these millions end up on the disabled list with all sorts of injuries. As of this writing, the Boston Red Sox have had 22 different players on the disabled list at any time this season. Doesn’t anyone realize how much dead money these owners have on their books? Do they even care? Whether we want to accept it or not, the money that these owners make comes from you and I, because we support our ball teams. I don’t think our money should be thrown away if a player can’t play for months because he hurt his shoulder or his elbow.
I’m really not trying to be insensitive. How many of you would like a nest egg of tens of millions of dollars to take care of your medical expenses if you get hurt, even if you’re not paid for being away from your job?
I would like baseball to stop issuing fully guaranteed contracts to players. The other three big professional sports have no problem doing that. But then again, the players’ union in baseball is so stubborn that it refuses to recognize any compassion for owners who are making terrible investments. Though, if they’re making the terrible investments in the first place, do they deserve to be saved from them?
I welcome your thoughts in the Reader’s Forum.