The most hated man in baseball has done it again. George Steinbrenner has infuriated the sports world – and Boston in particular – with his latest addition to the New York Yankees.
Alex Rodriguez, baseball’s best player, will be packing his bags and moving from Texas to New York to suit up for the richest team in the majors. The multimillion-dollar deal has enraged Red Sox fans, who were teased with the idea of having Rodriguez in their lineup back in December. The addition of A-Rod to the Yanks will bring their payroll to around $190 million – not bad considering half the players in the starting line-up have been on All-Star teams.
The weekend deal has hit a sore spot for baseball fans across the country. While it is nothing new that the Yankees have signed baseball’s best – they do that every year, it seems – they’ve reached new heights with the highest paid (and possibly, by the end of his career, best) player in the sport’s history.
Over the years, the size of players’ salaries has grown exponentially. Rodriguez signed the biggest contract in baseball history in 2000, his current 10-year $252 million dollar deal. Since then, not a single player has signed a contract for over $100 million – probably because people are starting to realize it’s ridiculous to pay someone that much money. But while baseball owners are beginning to police themselves, more needs to be done. Players and owners must realize just how much damage they are doing by not adding a salary cap (the league’s luxury tax arrangement is almost laughable), and until a compromise is reached between both the players and the owners, the bidding war for the best and the most expensive will inevitably continue – at the cost of the game itself.
Steinbrenner started the trend back when the Yankees were not winning at all. His decision to put every penny on the line in an effort to play in October every year has evolved into baseball’s yearly bidding war for top talent. But The Boss is not the only one to blame. Teams like the Red Sox and the Mets have increased their payrolls in an attempt to catch up with the Yankees, undoubtedly causing the size of players’ contracts to grow out of control.
Fans, players and owners in the league’s poorer cities are on the losing end each year. Teams that go into each new season without a considerable payroll are set up to fail. It is impossible to attract the best players without paying them the best salaries. Cities like Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh and Detroit know that all too well.
In the grand scheme of things, the Alex Rodriguez deal may just be an example of a bad trend – it may not have too much bearing on how things turn out in October. Somehow, everyone in the baseball community has a number of examples of teams that stay competitive despite significantly smaller payrolls. The Yankees haven’t bought a World Series win in a few years and it looks like the Red Sox may just keep pace with the Bronx Bombers for one more year – one player, no matter how good, will not win them a World Series all by himself.
Steinbrenner has once again pulled a move worthy of resentment, but he has done nothing out of the ordinary. Everyone in the baseball community needs to fix the problem soon.