Pro Athletes Salaries: The Price of Entertainment

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Professional athletes have been paid to play a variety of sports in over the past hundred and fifty years. Most players can manage perfectly playing the sport they love while being paid over what an average government worker (policeman, fireman, and teacher), instead they are paid massive paychecks that many people would only dream of having. The salaries of professional athletes have drastically increased ten-fold in the past 50 years and show that they earn vast amount of wealth, which in most opinions can be absurd. Athletes are paid too much for doing as little as playing the game they love to play. Having athletes being paid 5 times the income of an average household (Block) is outrageous and should be lowered.

Athletes receiving massive wages have not been around for very long, it has only been a problem for 20-30 years. An Average infielder in the 1950s only made an equivalent of $89,000 compared to $2.13 million (during 1992) an average MLB player makes a year currently (Zimbalist 92). Although the MLB was smaller in the 1950’s, the increase average MLB salaries are not proportional to the increased popularity over the years. The minimum wage for a MLB player is 32 times bigger than the minimum wage of a New Yorker. The minimum wage is $480,000 for a baseball player that mostly will sit on the bench the entire game while a standard 40 hour a week minimum wage job only pays around $15,080 (Block). Lou Gehrig was paid an equivalent of $431,000 while a utility MLB player minimum wage today makes around $50,000 above that amount (Seepersaud). Lou Gehrig, one of the most talented players in MLB history, was being paid below minimum wage of the MLB today which is very odd. Athletes back then were paid much more realistic amount...

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Haupert, Michael. "Baseball's major salary milestones.(More Modern Topics)." The Baseball Research Journal 22 Sept. 2011: n. pag. Print.
Marci, Kenneth. "Not Just a Game: Sport and Society in the United States." RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. . .
Owens, Ted. Personal interview. 12 April 2014.
Seepersaud, Steve. “Sports Salaries: Then and Now.” AskMen Web. .< http://www.askmen.com/sports/business_100/119_sports_business.html>
Zimbalist, Andrew S.. Baseball and billions: a probing look inside the big business of our national pastime. New York, NY: BasicBooks, 1992. Print.

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