SPORTS SHORTS

BASEBALL SWINGS INTO ACTION. PLAYERS HIT FINANCIAL HOMERUNS

Once again, rustles of spring were punctuated with the crack of the bat, as the new baseball season swung into action, but, inevitably, it was also accented by the ring of the cash register, as fans in worn-out sneakers and faded sweatshirts flocked to cheer and ridicule their home teams, when their beloved or maligned multimillionaires took to the field.

We reflected on the financial transformation of the sport from a contest that was actually waged in a stadium, primarily for the fans who were there, to a sport, much like pro football, where the players now primarily perform for the enormously larger and more lucrative TV and radio audience beyond the hallowed walls of the field house.

The evolution of the game to the megabuck superstardom its most able players enjoy was no doubt an inevitable concomitant, in our economic wild-west show, of the vastly facilitated means of mass communication.

While we willing admit reality and know, like it or not, that economic freedom is the foundation of individual dignity, we cannot help by take a moment to reflect on such antiquities as a fuzzy black and while film of Babe Ruth smacking one more out of the park, for, relatively speaking, a pauper’s pittance, or a headline from an old newspaper our eyes recently came upon, where the smiling face of Yogi Berra appeared beneath an enormous and excited headline that shouted, “Berra signs for $48,000!”

Not daring to compete with his famously inept command of the English language, we will simply note that today his astonishing signing salary would more accurately be described as the pitcher’s petty cash.

RETURN TO HOME