Rodriguez’S Contract Costly In Many Ways
Where’s the U.S. Supreme Court when you really need it? It’s been almost a week now, and the justices have shown no sign of jumping in to reverse and remand the decision that really needs reconsideration: the Texas Rangers’ signing of Alex Rodriguez - Pay-Rod, as he has been redubbed by one Seattle columnist - to a $252 million contract.
So, since that decision is apparently going to stand, it’s time to review a few of the problems it presents.
No, not the usual ones. Plenty of other people have already weighed in on how this contract will hasten the end of baseball as we know it, business as we know it, and even civilization as we know it.
Instead, you might want to consider what Pay-Rod’s contract means to any number of individuals: Little League parents. You think the stereotypical overbearing dad was bad before, putting the ball in junior’s crib and trying to get him to do everything left-handed, so he could make a fortune as a journeyman left-handed pitcher? What’s it going to be like now? Imagine the inevitable scene, somewhere in earth-toned suburban America: “Bob, you’ve got to talk to Billy.”
“Why, Marge?”
“He’s in doing his homework again.”
“What!” (Marches into bedroom, furious.)
“Billy, how many times do I have to tell you to keep your priorities straight? You think A-Rod got a quarter-billion dollars for doing well in history? You get your behind out there in that batting cage this instant, and I don’t want to see you back here until you can’t lift a bat!”
“But, Dad, I like history!”
“I don’t care. Your mom and I haven’t made all these sacrifices so you could just sit in here and study. No one ever bought their parents a home on a Palm Springs golf course by liking history! Now you get out there and take 5,000 swings from each side of the plate, young man. And if there’s any time after that, you can do your homework.”
Corporate executives. How can your average Fortune 500 CEO hold his head up at the country club, knowing that the salary he’s earned for pushing up profits is completely overshadowed by some guy in Texas who not only makes more annually for fielding and catching a ball, but probably has women throwing themselves at him to boot?
Where, he wonders dejectedly, is the fairness in a world that doesn’t put the same kind of value on moving plants to Taiwan and pushing the Nasdaq price to an all-time high?
Youth and high-school coaches. As if the job weren’t tough enough already, imagine what it’s going to be like when the parents of non-starters start slapping those coaches with lawsuits, seeking damages compensating the family for the loss of their son’s future income:
“We don’t care that he’s batting .125 and fielding .250. He’s the next A-Rod, I tell you. And you’re costing us a fortune!”
Agents. Owners already consider them the devil incarnate, and it seems as if they might be right in the case of Scott Boras, A-Rod’s agent, who has the mysterious ability, when locked in a room with an otherwise intelligent billionaire businessman, to convince him to throw away money like a drunken lotto winner at a Las Vegas dice table.
But the real evil of the A-Rod deal was that it pushed Boras to a level of stardom of his own.If the contracts to Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez and others mean that we’re going to have to listen to agents all the time, the cost is even higher than we suspected.
Sportswriters. Hey, we’re generally math-challenged as it is. And now we’re supposed to deal with numbers that even our $9.95 pocket calculators can’t handle?