An Argument Against High Salaries in Major League Baseball
Twenty-five million dollars made per year. Over one hundred fifty-four thousand dollars made per game. Over forty-seven thousand dollars earned per at bat. Sounds a little ridiculous, does it not? That is what current Texas Ranger shortstop Alex Rodriguez earns to play the game of baseball (azcentral.com). Baseball is a game that children have been playing in schoolyards and fields for the past one hundred years. It may not be a game anymore. On the Major League level it has become a business. This is where the problem starts.
There are twenty-five players who make more than ten million dollars per year, a price that, ten years ago, only two players made half of that (azcentral.com). The Seattle Mariners had the highest median salary in 2002 at over 3.3 million dollars per player. Ten years ago, the same Seattle Mariners had a median salary of $317,500; an increase of over three million dollars or an increase of over 900% (usatoday.com). This trend can be seen in all Major League franchises. The salaries in Major League Baseball are growing at an astronomical rate that should not only decrease, but halt, due to the fact that these salaries are pushing away the fans that support these businesses and the lack of parity within baseball itself.
Baseball has historically been known as America’s pastime because the American people cannot only enjoy games that they play themselves, but attend professional games and have a good afternoon with friends. But in 1972, Curt Flood challenged the reserve system in court and became the first free-agent, a player who is legally able to sign a contract with any team he chooses for a...
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...ined. The money of this nation should go towards those who will make a difference tomorrow. The salaries of professional baseball players are at such a level that fan support is dwindling from the franchises, as well as creating a talent gap among teams causing the game to be tainted.
Works Cited
Stark, Jayson. The Decision that Changed the Game. 22 November 2002. 25 March 2003 http://espn.go.com/mlb/columns/stark_jayson/891711.html
2002 MLB Attendance. 23 February 2003. Montreal Expos. 25 March 2003 http://mtlexpos.tripod.com/attendance2002_mlb.htm
Baseball Salaries Database. 11 November 2002. USA Today. 25 March 2003 http://asp.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/salaries/default.aspx
Twenty-five Highest Paid Major League Baseball Players. 12 May 2002. Arizona Republic. 25 March 2003 http://www.azcentral.com/sports/diamondbacks/ top25salaries2002.html
Do Major League Baseball teams with higher salaries win more frequently than other teams? Although many people believe that the larger payroll budgets win games, which point does vary, depending on the situation. "performances by individual players vary quite a bit from year to year, preventing owners from guaranteeing success on the field. Team spending is certainly a component in winning, but no team can buy a championship." (Bradbury). For some, it’s hard not to root for the lower paid teams. If the big money teams, like Goliath, are always supposed to win, it’s hard not cheer for David. This paper will discuss the effects of payroll budgets on the percentage of wins for the 30 Major League Baseball teams of 2007.
For the last 30 years, the New York Yankees have been a dominant force in Major League Baseball. Other teams do not make as much money as the New York Yankees therefore they have less capital to spend on big name players. In 1994, the Major Leagues put the luxury tax into place. The idea was to tax a club’s payroll if the total payroll exceeded a certain limit. However, the Yankees seem to exceed this limit every year. The Yankees are a notable team not only for their impressive history on the field, but also for their financial situation. The Yankees owner spends more on player salaries than any other franchise in baseball. “As of 2004, the team payroll is more than $182 million, which is $51 million more than the second-highest team, the Boston Red Sox, and more than the six lowest-payroll teams combined” (Wikipedia Encyclopedia”). The millions of people who are associated with baseball in this country, many of whom had only a vague idea of what was happening, are now asking themselves whether or not the game is being played fairly. Even though teams like the New York Yankees are able to assemble top-notch teams by ignoring the spending limit, a salary cap is necessary to maintain the equal competitive nature of major leag...
Overall, compelling points exist supporting or not supporting a salary cap in baseball. Teams have the benefit of a salary cap existing, and out of that, a balance in free agency forms and a sense of championship parity develops too. On the other side of the spectrum, teams can use the Moneyball method of recruiting and signing players, along with tax implications and revenue sharing to balance out payrolls. The main factor in deciding if a salary cap is appropriate is the factor of fairness among the teams. Therefore, based off the support the research provides, the implementation of a salary cap is necessary.
Under the protection of Major League Baseball’s (“MLB”) longtime antitrust exemption, Minor League Baseball (“MiLB”) has continuously redefined and reshaped itself according to Baseball’s overall needs. But while MLB salaries have increased dramatically since the MLB reserve clause was broken in 1975, the salaries of minor league players have not followed suit.
A salary cap gives all the teams an equal chance to sign players. It also keeps teams with a lot of money not able to acquire every all-star they want , or any player who is a free agent. Some Major League Baseball teams like the Anahiem Angels and the Atlanta Braves are owned by very wealthy people and companies. The Anaheim Angels are owned by Disney.(Worisnop, 128) So with no surprise the Angels can produce a team which can be very competitive, and have several all-star players. Just recently they exercised this advantage by signing Mo Vaughn for ninety million dollars over seven years.(Antonen, 2) There were at least four other teams that wanted to sign this all-star, but the Angels easily had the money, and outbid everyone who wanted to sign him. If there was a salary cap in Major League Baseball then the Angels would have thought twice about giving that much money to one player. With the its roster for one year. So giving one player 12.8 million dollars for one year does not really make sense if the salary cap is fifty million dollars a year. That would leave only 37.2 million dollars for the twenty-four other players, which equals each player getting on average a little less than one and a half million dollars a year.
As an African-American during the late 1800s to 1960, the Negro Leagues was the only chance at being a part of professional baseball until Branch Rickey, an owner of professional baseball teams, put his ‘great experiment’ into motion with the aid of Jackie Robinson who became the first African-American to break the color barrier in 1947. Some coaches, who wanted African-Americans on their teams in order to increase their chances of winning games, would take part in a process called barnstorming. Barnstorming is when a team would hire an African-American but label that player as either Hispanic or Native American in order for them to play because at the time, African-American were not allowed to play on professional white baseball teams (The Library of Congress). Two contrasting economic sides leading to the desegregation of baseball include at the time when team members knew that if baseball were to integrate, the Negro Leagues would disappear as they would lose their best players to major league teams, which was beneficial to the major league teams whereas the other side was that if black players were integrated into white professional teams, white fans would be more reluctant to watch games with black players participating (The Library of Congress). It wasn’t until after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier by putting on the official jersey of the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming an official member of an integrated professional baseball team, that the relevance of Negro Leagues began to decrease, until they disappeared in 1960 as more teams began to integrate as well.
Workers feeling, which includes competitive compensation and reward strategies, professional growth and development, career paths and succession plans and the organizations leadership and culture are contributing factors of employee engagement
Since the sport first emerged, baseball and America have shared the same values, responded to the same events, and struggled with the same social and economic issues. To learn of the ideals concerning the sport of baseball in America, is to know the heart and mind of America. Baseball developed before the Civil War but did not achieve professional status until the 1870s (The Baseball Glove, 2004). In 1871, the National Association of Professional Baseball Players was formed. Unfortunately, the organization ran into financial hardships and was abandoned in 1875.
The problem with this is the inflation of players' salaries. When players are drafted young, they demand to be paid what they want; teams pay them millions right out of college.
Baseball remains today one of America’s most popular sports, and furthermore, baseball is one of America’s most successful forms of entertainment. As a result, Baseball is an economic being of its own. However, the sustainability of any professional sport organization depends directly on its economic capabilities. For example, in Baseball, all revenue is a product of the fans reaction to ticket prices, advertisements, television contracts, etc. During the devastating Great Depression in 1929, the fans of baseball experienced fiscal suffering. The appeal of baseball declined as more and more people were trying to make enough money to live. There was a significant drop in attention, attendance, and enjoyment. Although baseball’s vitality might have seemed threatened by the overwhelming Great Depression, the baseball community modernized their sport by implementing new changes that resulted in the game’s survival.
Rich, B., Lepine, J., & Crawford, E. (2010). Job engagement: Antecedents and effects on job performance. Academy Of Management Journal, 53(3), 617-635. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
The controversy of athletes being overpaid dates back to 1922, when well-known baseball player George “Babe” Ruth received $50,000 within the first year of his career. Ruth’s extensive wealth was bolstered by dozens of endorsements (Saperecom). As it is shown in figure 1, in the Fortunate 50 Tiger Woods takes the number one spot for highest paid athlete. Tiger’s salary for 2011 is $2,294,116 and like Babe Ruth, his endorsements exceed his salary earning $60,000,000 making his total $62,294,116 (Freedman). It’s crazy to think that 89 years ago professional athletes scarcely made more than the average person today. This is of course not counting the inflation that has occurred since the years which Babe Ruth played baseball.
African-American baseball players had been a part of professional baseball when it was first starting in the 1880s. Some black players had signed a contract already with their team, but the International League banned blacks from signing anymore. Blacks that were already under contract were able to finish until it was up, but they were not allowed to renew it. Ever since that, Major League Baseball was a segregated sport until the late 1940s. The major league owners had conspired together and wrote what was called a “gentlemen's agreement” to keep black players out of the game. This did not stop African-Americans from achieving their goal of playing baseball. They organized their own teams and played “pickup games” with anyone that ...
This is a very big milestone for teams in the league to hit, and it was done only last year. Every team is now worth at least 1 billion dollars, and the average team is worth about 1.2 billion. The revenue of all the teams just keeps going up and up. The sport if anything is becoming more popular at the professional level. The teams keep becoming more wealthy, and this is due to the spending of their fans. The profit shown by this study shows that many people are dedicated to watching the sport at the professional level, but there is also a study that shows how the game is still popular at the lower levels. All the professional athletes started out as minors playing in little league, and this is where the future athletes are now. The future of the game is determined by how many children are interested in the sport to continue to play. One way to determine how many kids play the sport is by looking at the wholesale of baseball equipment over a few years. “The statistic depicts the manufacturers (wholesale) sales of baseball and softball equipment in the U.S. from 2007 to 2015. In 2010, wholesale sales of baseball/softball bats amounted to about 181 million U.S. dollars” (Statistica, paragraph 1). Research done by Statistica shows the profit made from selling baseball equipment from 2007 to 2015. The results show that equipment for baseball has made much profit for many companies. Just the baseball bats alone sold for over 180 million dollars, and that is excluding other things like gloves, helmets, and other equipment and accessories. This statistic shows that below the professional level, baseball is still very popular and many children and young adults still play. The money made from them buying this equipment gives the opportunity to have a good idea of how many people play below the professional level. The financial situation of the
In his study about psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work, Kahn have shown that there are three psychological engagement elements that can influence an individual’s behaviour in relation to their job function. The elements are 1) meaningfulness - rewards from engagement, 2) safety - higher willingness to engage, and 3) availability - readiness to engage (Kahn, 1990). Because of his work, Kahn is widely regarded as the pioneer of employee engagement and his findings are still engaged and found in many references about employee