from Amazon
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
“F-ck curing cancer. I want to watch baseball.”
Who said those words? Why, you dear reader:
Baseball analyst Bill James once wrote: “One of the unwritten laws of economics is that it is impossible, truly impossible, to prevent the values of society from manifesting themselves in dollars and cents. This is, ultimately, the reason why athletes are paid so much money.” The reason, Mr. James argued, that ballplayers make so much and medical researchers so relatively little is that, “[W]e are, as a nation, far more interested in having good baseball teams than we are in finding a cure for cancer.” He might have added that the principle applies as well to pop icons and movie stars.
It isn’t some vague indefinable “they” who pays the players. It really isn’t even the owners. It’s you, or rather, it’s us. If we put our money where our mouths are and support cancer, AIDS or Down syndrome research and then buy our tickets with what’s left over, athletes and rock stars will actually be paid what we pretend they should be paid.
The fault lies not in our All-Stars, but in ourselves.
Glove-slap (*): Basebology Blog
(*) Glove-tap to mc79hockey.com for the idea to use Glove-slap instead of hat-tip.