The Monopoly Money Days for Baseball

The General Managers of Major League Baseball are gathering in Naples, Florida these days and with the meetings comes the usual pursuit of free agents. Once again the General Managers are acting like they’ve pulled out their well traveled Monopoly Board Game and have just landed on Free Parking.

This year the Toronto Blue Jays have decided to become major participants in the derby and today they made their first big move.

38 year old Frank Thomas, late of the Oakland A’s will be pulling on a Jays uniform at spring training next April, and he’ll be very well compensated for that day to day grind of the designated hitter.

Thomas is reported to have signed a ten million dollar a year deal with the Jays, guaranteed for two years with a potential third to go with it, TEN MILLION that was, a rather nice bump in salary from his pittance of 500,000 dollars a year last season, though he did top that up with commissions based on achievement for a total pay package of 2.6 million.

Still, Ten million does seem like a lot of money for a baseball player, especially one who is getting up there in age and has had a few injuries over the years. While he’s by all accounts a rather remarkable talent, this cost analysis stuff seems completely out to lunch. Mr. Rogers is going to have to sell a lot of cellular phone packages and cable TV subscriptions to help keep Frank in fine clothes and food.

It’s just an indication as to how out of whack the scale of payment between pro sports and the real world is getting.

In fact at times, baseball seems to lead the league if you will in excess in pursuit of talent, just yesterday the Boston Red Sox outbid all other Major League teams by throwing in 51.1 million dollars into the pot for the chance, the chance to talk to Japanese sensation Daisuke Matsuzaka.

That’s 51.1 million dollars spent before they even have a chance to negotiate a contract with him, which no doubt will add quite a few zeros to the final payment plan. And they aren't even sure if he can play in the Major Leagues, go figure!

And these are still the early days of free agency, the possibilities and millions are endless it seems when it comes to finding somebody to pencil into a line up card.

It’s enough to make you shake your head and wonder how the different sports leagues can continue going on the way they do and how anyone can actually relate to the players that take the field and the owners that count the cash.