$97,000
March 31, 2001
11:06 a.m.
Surprise. Major League Baseball is raising the prices of their tickets by some 13% this year. They've also instituted a charge for listening to the Internet broadcast of games--a paltry $10 for the right to listen to an entire year, but ten bucks is ten bucks. To a kid it's probably two week's allowance. Donald Fehr, the player's union rep, is adamant that the players had no part in those dastardly, money-grubbing owners' decisions to raise prices and charge for rights to listen to the games. Now, I give the guy credit for doing his job--he's trying to deflect the bad PR baggage these steps obviously carry. But let's get serious. How can this man make a statement like that without falling over on the floor laughing? I mean, this is the same year that a guy has agreed to a contract that will pay him $250 million dollars. Wow. Yeah, it's over a ten-year period or whatever. But regardless, $250 million is a number that I just have a hard time understanding. To grasp that, I have to conjure up a few images--things like, the lost Mars Polar orbiter cost $164 million. Yeah, it was lost, and that was bad news ... but heck, it's only six years of a baseball player's salary. Or maybe it's better for me to look at it in light of my old job ... it wasn't so long ago I was using the possible loss of a $40 million aircraft as a reason to make technical decisions. So, now I grasp that this baseball player's salary by thinking he's worth a bit over six F-14s. Still, I find this hard to really grasp. I mean, Mars Polar Landers and F-14s don't touch me on a daily basis. The problem is that we're dealing with sums of money that I will almost surely never need to relate to in my average, white-male-with-a-family, mid-western lifestyle. Just between you and me, it's unlikely that I'll wake up one day with the pressing urge to buy the International Space Station, after all. Luckily, fate provides a better handle. On the same newspaper page that carried the article outlining baseball's price increases (and carrying Donald Fehr's quote) was an article about Carl Everett being fined $97,000 for missing a bus. Now, admittedly the guy has hit about .300, and managed some 74 dingers over the past three seasons. But $97,000? That's a lot of money. Heck ... 9,700 kids could listen to major league baseball for the entire year on that kind of cash. Better yet, if you're reading this, I think it's probably safe to say that Carl Everett just got fined considerably more than your annual salary for the mere crime of sleeping late (or whatever it was that caused him to miss the bus). Not that I don't think Daily Persistence readers aren't worth $97,000, or anything. I suppose a few of you might actually top this figure ... but reality forces me to think that it's unlikely that too many folks that wander by my place make much more than that. This morning I found 98 listings of houses in the Columbus area that cost less than $97,000. I didn't look really hard, so I figure I could have found more than a few more. I figure that number is about 40% of the houses listed. The cars that Lisa and I drive are probably worth $15,000 combined--maybe more, maybe less. So this means Carl Everett was just fined a fleet of twelve cars like ours. Actually thirteen. $97,000. Whooo-weeeee. It must be nice to be able to afford to spend that kind of money in order to catch a few extra winks (or whatever Everett was doing--which I'll admit I don't know). $97,000 feeds my family for probably four or five years ... more if we skimp. $97,000 sends my family to Disney World for summer vacation from now until my daughter is 28. Heck, I think the taxes alone on $97K would put a family over the poverty line. Now, I don't begrudge Carl Everett his money. Assuming the business of baseball continues to exist, players are worth whatever they're paid. That's business. Supply, demand, cash flow to the entertainers and the distributors and the concessionaires and everyone else in the pipeline. A stock is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. What sticks in my craw, though, is the audacity of people like Donald Fehr--a man who actually managed to say that players have no part in raising ticket prices or charging for internet broadcasts with what I'm sure was a straight face. Holy cows. I've got to think Russell Crowe is out of his head with joy that Fehr waited until this spring to make this statement, because there's no doubt that he is now the odds-on favorite for next year's actor in a lead role Oscar.   Then there's Adam Taliaferro. For those that don't recognize the name, Taliaferro is a student at Penn State. His is 19 years old. He played football last year, and broke his neck as he tried to tackle a running back. Standard fare--doctors said it was doubtful the kid would walk again. His teammates dedicated a game to him. The news talked about him for a while. Then it got quiet. Every few weeks a blurb would get released. You would hear he was moving various parts of his body. A report would come out about how he was dedicating himself to his physical therapy, and how he struggled to put a foot in front of the other for a long trip down the tread-lined track. I saw an article a few months ago where he said he wasn't done playing football. I scoffed, of course. Then I read further and felt pretty guilty scoffing when I saw his attitude was different. I'm paraphrasing the kid's quote, but he basically said "There're more kinds of football than those games played on Saturday afternoon." The article caught me off guard. You could read the love for the game that Adam Taliaferro had as he struggled to beat the odds the doctors had given him, and his words brought to me images of a man throwing the ball around with his kids on a leaf-strewn playground. The college football season ended three months ago. Adam Taliaferro still worked. He walked out of the hospital under his own power, albeit on crutches. He returned to Penn State's spring training facility this February walking unassisted, and offered to participate in any way possible--maybe team manager, maybe just be there, and be part of the team. I saw an article today that indicated that he's going to complete his outpatient rehab this week, and that he's scheduled to throw out the first pitch at a major league baseball game this April. And in September, Adam Taliaferro wants to lead the Penn State football team out of the tunnel for their first game. Think about it.  $97,000 Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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"Players have absolutely nothing to do with ticket prices. We had nothing to do with the recent decision to charge for Web broadcasts. These are management decisions, which management makes based on what each club or central baseball determines is the econoomic condition of the country and each market." Donald Fehr players union head quoted in an AP article |
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