Outside the Box

Yahoo! Sports: MLB - 'If he were poor, I'd return it'

``Make no mistake,'' San Diego Padres president Larry Lucchino warned, ``these obscene salaries are paid for by taxing the fans.'' Seattle Mariners CEO Howard Lincoln, whose team lost Rodriguez, labeled Hicks ``a fool.''

Were any of these English and Journalism majors paying attention in Intro to Economics? If we all kick in a few bucks, we can send them to a remedial offering at their local community college.

I could see so viciously criticizing the players if they were failing to honor their contracts. If they were holding out in their first six years refusing to abide by the collective bargaining agreement, I would join the baseball writers in their contempt over player salaries. But as it is now, the players and owners are negotiating in good faith, and the owners are cheerfully paying these salaries.

As for Mr. Lucchino, how big do your cojones have to be, to talk about "taxing fans" when your team extorts $275 million from fans and non-fans alike for a new stadium you don't even have the decency (or perhaps wherewithal) to pay more than half of? That one quote sums up perfectly how duplicitous and downright deceitful these men are. And the media is completely unable to separate the cow from its byproducts and give us the straight poop on the business of baseball.

This crap has been going on for 25 years and we still have to read articles from every corner heralding impending doom. Has one team come even remotely close to missing their payroll or missing a debt payment since all of these "crazy/insane/moronic/stupefying/game-destroying" contracts have been signed? ONE?! P.T. Barnum was right, though he may have underestimated the rate.