Paul's Ponderings - April 3, 2008

Spring has finally sprung – at least part of the time, with this (Wednesday) morning being an exception as I went out to go to work and found my car windows coated with ice again – and if you’re like me, your thoughts turn to outdoor activities. Things like fishing, boating, mowing the yard (something I wish didn’t come with spring) and that great American pastime, baseball.
I’ve been a huge fan of baseball ever since my youth, when I played, none too successfully, a few years in Little League and Pony League, and have closely followed major league baseball since those days. In fact, I’ve enjoyed major league baseball a great deal in recent years, as my beloved Boston Red Sox have won two World Series in a span of four years after not having accomplished the feat for decades.
However, my enthusiasm for the state of professional baseball today becomes tempered somewhat when I see an article like the one I read early this morning concerning the outlandish amount of money that baseball players are being paid to play a game.
According to the article, the average salary for all the ballplayers playing in the American and National leagues on opening day this year is $3,154,845. And, this is just the average – some players are being paid six, seven, eight or even nine times that amount, led by the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez, who signed a new deal in the off season that will pay him $28.1 million this year.
But, back to that $3,154,845 average salary. If my calculations are close to right, there are 33 players on each major league team, so the average payroll for each team is $104,109,885. Multiply this figure by the 30 different teams, and major league baseball’s total salary this year will be $3,123,296,550. That’s three billion, one hundred twenty-three million, two hundred ninety six thousand, five hundred and fifty dollars.
Consider the fact that the baseball season only last six months – roughly half a year – and that teams play only 162 games – games which on the average last for about three hours each - during this span, and the amount of money that players receive for actually doing what they get paid for is even more mind-boggling. Again, according to my calculations, if a ballplayer played every inning of every game, with the games lasting an average of three hours each, his hourly salary would come out to be $6,491 and change per hour. And, what about the pitchers who only pitch every four or five days, or the bench rider who might only pinch hit every four of five games? I won’t even go there.
The way I figure it, the $3 billion-plus in salaries being paid to the 990 professional baseball players this year would pay the yearly salaries of 256,681 individuals earning the minimum wage of $5.85 per hour and working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. It would pay the average national salary of $47,000-plus for 65,477 teachers. The list could go on and on.
In defense of the baseball players themselves, I can’t fault them for taking all the money that the owners want to pay them. But, I can find fault in the way our society operates today.
This is just one example of how out of balance, how out of touch with reality that our society has become.