Baseball Salaries, Revenues, etc., in Perspective

Perhaps this John Brattain article at The Hardball Times will be of interest to anyone who might think that baseball* players are greedy, whining, overpaid bums who should be happy to be getting paid for playing a game. He says

If you read the mainstream media, you’d get the impression that the players and their agents do little more than behave like pigs trying to find truffles, sniffing around looking for top dollar regardless of where it leads them and being willing to lie, connive, misrepresent, extort and manipulate their way to riches caring little of who is hurt along the way. You’d guess that if Jesus Christ were to join mankind again, Scott Boras would make bloody sure that he’d get more than a lousy 30 pieces of silver for him. Oh the poor owners -- shackled to a system where they’re forced to pay tens, and even hundreds of millions of dollars to greedy players who just want more, more, more.

Please.

I might be able to shed a tear for the poor blighters if I could grate a large onion and stick the pulp up my nose and rub it into my eyes -- but even that’s a stretch.

Brattain then goes on into some interesting details about payrolls, bookkeeping practises, stadium funding and the luxury tax.


*In the background of everything baseball there's a bony man with bad hair shuffling a gleeful dance while he presses his lips firmly to his wallet.