Every single one of them - no, don't want to open the old discussion about baseball players being overpaid, and how the owners don't have to pay them the money, and how it's a free market, and 'blah blah blah' - I do understand it, really. But personally, I think it's insane to place a worth on a human being hitting, pitching or fielding a baseball that high, which means I think that the economics driving it has gotten out of hand. And yeah, we're all paying for it in one way or another, those who go to the games, those whose cable bills are incrementally higher due to ESPN increasing its fees when it signs contracts to broadcast games, those who are paying higher motel/hotel taxes in cities who've raised them to help pay for improvements to (or additions of) stadiums, and those whose cities like Kansas City are considering a new sales tax (this one bistate) to help pay for primarily improvements to their stadiums (Arrowhead and Kauffman). To me, I say (well, here I go anyway - lol) screw the owners for passing the costs onto taxpayers and screw the players and their union: cap the maximum salary paid to $2 mill or less per year, and force the owners to contribute essentially the difference into a team trust fund, managed independently, that can only be dipped into for the same damn improvements that they're always asking the taxpayers to fund. The problem lies not with baseball fans who consciously choose to pay the price and support their team, but with the 'innocents' who don't give a shit yet whose wallets and purses are made lighter against their will for a commercially-owned and operated SPORT: not extra police or firemen, but a game in which they have no interest and do not benefit from. Unless of course they win the World Series and then they get to pay for the clean-up of the resulting celebratory riots - lol!
None of these people are worth that kind of money when it's so heavily subsidized by taxes.
[This message was edited by Jazz on February 26, 2004 at 12:20 PM.]