Lock Them Out! Out-of-Touch Baseball Players Burying Baseball
OPINION: MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL’S “MINUMUM WAGE”
Baseball, once America’s proud national pastime — but now a sport on long, gradual, unrestrainable, and unmistakable decline in popularity and influence — is in the midst of a self-defeating lockdown.
Call it collective madness. The start of the regular season has been postponed. For the first time in 27 years, we’re likely to see a significant number of baseball games canceled. The entire season might get wiped out.
What are the players and owners fighting about? You guessed it — M. O. N. E. Y.
According to recent data, MLB players in 2021 earned an average annual income of $4.17 million. Not the superstars. Not the league batting and pitching leaders. Many top players earn *ten times* that figure. Fact: $4.17 million is the AVERAGE salary of a MLB player in America.
Now, crotch-scratching, tobacco-spitting, hopelessly out-of-touch ball sponges insist they should be paid MORE?
One of the current stalemates in negotiations is the divide between MLB owners and the MLBPA, which is the players’ association. In 2021 (last season), the MLB minimum salary was $570,500. As recently a week ago, MLB owners proposed a $630,000 minimum salary for 2022 (which amounts to an 11 percent increase over last year). Meanwhile, the MLBPA is seeking a whopping $775,000 league minimum (a 40 percent increase!). Let that sink in for a moment. We’re coming out of one of the most disruptive economic interruptions in our lifetimes (hopefully), while the average baseball fan who buys tickets continues to struggle financially. Let’s at least agree the timing here looks bad.
Sure, it’s hard to justify, make that impossible, to support greedy clueless MLB owners, who as a group are about as innovative as a box of rocks and somehow became the “dumb luck” champions of the life lottery. Call it success in spite of oneself. But it’s impossible to have any sympathy for baseball players, right now, who play a game 8 months out of the year and make demands that are totally unfathomable to the rest of working-class America. No one gets a 40 percent pay increase. Nobody. That alone should be a deal-breaker, just based on principle.
Talk about being tone-deaf.
Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. That became effective July 24, 2009. While some states have mandated increases, the federal minimum wage for regular people hasn’t been raised in nearly 13 years.
Sorry-baseball players. You’re on your own in this fight. Cancel all the games. Scrap the season. Some of us won’t miss baseball, at all. And — if and when you do come back — don’t expect me and millions of others to buy tickets, cheer, or even care.
