Salaries of professional athletes keep increasing on a yearly basis. But yet, performances on the field by athletes have not been increasing at a proportionate rate – unless you believe that mediocrity equals high-level performance. Rather than looking at how well the athlete performs on the field, owners appear to be looking more at competing with other teams to see who can keep some of the better players.
Examples of this of this can be seen in almost all sports. Today a .250 batting average and hitting 20 home runs qualifies a baseball player to be considered a high-level power hitter. Salaries for such performances are in the $7,000,000 per year range. Pitchers with losing records get $1 million raises. If you have a ballplayer better than this, the amount of money involved skyrockets.
To illustrate, the Texas Rangers paid about $111 million for Japanese pitcher Yu Darvish. Of this amount they paid $51 million just to be able to talk to him. They even had a scout in Japan watching every game over the past two years to evaluate his performances.
The greatest example however, is the latest contract signed by Albert Pujols, now of the California Angels. His contract calls for approximately $240 million but this did not seem to be a stumbling block. The biggest hang-up was where his complementary seats in the ballpark were to be and which box at the ballpark was going to be available to him. This was in addition to having a complementary suite at every hotel they would stay in during their road trips.
As outrageous as some of these perks may be, even more amazing is the fact that there is never a clause guaranteeing that the player produce every year as he does at present. If he doesn’t produce (maintain his batting average etc.) he doesn’t get paid the same amount for that year. To have something like this included is unheard of. Owners would rather take a bath and lose the money if the athlete doesn’t perform rather than requiring him to earn his money.
This is not unique to any one team, or more accurately, any rich team. Other teams are willing to step up and offer similar contracts. They are willing to spend mega millions on individual ballplayers but not spend any money on specialists who can improve player performance.
It must be the celebrity status of the player that demands the money more than his actual production. This also applies to many equally as good if not better players, who are in the early years of their contracts and cannot demand more money.
But as long as the fans are willing to pay increased ticket prices – as they appear to be – can we blame the athletes for these salaries and perks?
For related information read Sports:Is It All B.S.?