2008 Woodie Awards
Who is at fault?
Tim Rosini
Issue date: 11/8/07 Section: sports
- Page 1 of 1
Three hundred and fifty million dollars. 350 MILLION for one player who hasn't reached a world series in his career; A player who, until this year and this year only was known as anti-clutch, or better yet anti-Mr. October. Even these playoffs, which his team lost in the first round, again, this player did not bat over .300. I'm resorting to Bill Parcells' method of dealing with Terrell Owens by calling him "The player". I guess I can't really understand the nature of business when it comes down to realistic numbers for players. I believe all sports athletes are overpaid to some exten,t but it is so set in stone at this point THAT there is no going back. Sticking with the A-rod… I mean "The Player" storyline… I don't care if you average 70 homeruns for 5 years in a row; no player is worth that amount of money over any given period of time. I am a fan of "the player" and a fan of the Yankees. I think this way of thinking about athletes and how they make us fans, resulting in the common notion that they deserve "X amount" of money to play essentially a recreational game, runs deeper then just the headlines this player has been making.
I wish that the Yankees would resign "The Player", but I've also come to realize that in baseball, it's the collection of talents and attributes, along with the characters, of all the players on a team that determines whether that particular team I capable of winning a World Series. There have been numerous examples in baseball over the past couple seasons. The White Sox, the Marlins, and I still don't even know how, but St. Louis have all become World Series Champions. Not because they went out and signed the biggest free agent that year, or tried to throw the most talent on the field that numbers and statistics could back up. Now I'm not claiming to be a scout, although I think I could hold my own giving a chance of evaluating play, but something within the philosophy of the Yankees has to change. Understandably they will never be the come from out of nowhere team as many are by the examples I have above. It sometimes seems odd to me that we use images of 1920's and 1930's teams to directly link the ideals of the team that takes the field today. for example, the Yankees have been called the Bronx bombers over 60 years, I'm not sure when it originated but assuming it was around the time of the 1927 Yankees and "Murders Row" it would be closer to 80 years. The point here is that tradition is a big part of our American culture. Just because one Yankees team was called the Bronx bombers, does that mean every team they ever assembled had the hitting power worth of being call the Bronx bombers? Coupled with sports legacy and ongoing ever-evolving storyline of sports; somehow a team is cemented as a certain type of character, almost as if it is alive. The characters of a team, along with the media, paints us a larger picture of the sports world with emotional twinges that make us love, hate, route for, despise, refuse to wear a certain shirt with a certain logo of, argue with another person about, and so on. The characters and the emotional discharge of that teams play cause us to be fans or to hate without remorse. So all in all we can't blame A-rod for being A-rod, or the Yankees for being the Yankees, or Notre Dame for being Notre Dame, or any athlete that is getting grossly overpaid to start, but then in certain situations when the athlete is not performing very well or even at all; because in a sense we as fans and all fans throughout every sport are responsible for the reality we take our sports nation to.
We look to these men as modern gladiators, kids look at them as heroes, and who is going to sit down and explain to their 5 year old that the favorite player took steroids, did cocaine, cheated on his wife, got a DUI, punched out a teammate, spent 10 million dollars at a casino, then went out and scored 50 points, or hit 3 home-runs. Not me, that's for sure, so we can be flabbergasted by the ongoing negative stories sports athletes are conjuring, but we all share the blame. We want to see these players perform; we'll pay money, buy shirts, posters, and everything else that goes along with being an avid fan. The athlete who is human just like the rest of us gets paid millions of dollars and we are perplexed how this could eventually become a problem. Well it's increasingly becoming a problem in the sports world, and A-rod's potential 350 million dollar contract is just the tip of the iceberg.
I wish that the Yankees would resign "The Player", but I've also come to realize that in baseball, it's the collection of talents and attributes, along with the characters, of all the players on a team that determines whether that particular team I capable of winning a World Series. There have been numerous examples in baseball over the past couple seasons. The White Sox, the Marlins, and I still don't even know how, but St. Louis have all become World Series Champions. Not because they went out and signed the biggest free agent that year, or tried to throw the most talent on the field that numbers and statistics could back up. Now I'm not claiming to be a scout, although I think I could hold my own giving a chance of evaluating play, but something within the philosophy of the Yankees has to change. Understandably they will never be the come from out of nowhere team as many are by the examples I have above. It sometimes seems odd to me that we use images of 1920's and 1930's teams to directly link the ideals of the team that takes the field today. for example, the Yankees have been called the Bronx bombers over 60 years, I'm not sure when it originated but assuming it was around the time of the 1927 Yankees and "Murders Row" it would be closer to 80 years. The point here is that tradition is a big part of our American culture. Just because one Yankees team was called the Bronx bombers, does that mean every team they ever assembled had the hitting power worth of being call the Bronx bombers? Coupled with sports legacy and ongoing ever-evolving storyline of sports; somehow a team is cemented as a certain type of character, almost as if it is alive. The characters of a team, along with the media, paints us a larger picture of the sports world with emotional twinges that make us love, hate, route for, despise, refuse to wear a certain shirt with a certain logo of, argue with another person about, and so on. The characters and the emotional discharge of that teams play cause us to be fans or to hate without remorse. So all in all we can't blame A-rod for being A-rod, or the Yankees for being the Yankees, or Notre Dame for being Notre Dame, or any athlete that is getting grossly overpaid to start, but then in certain situations when the athlete is not performing very well or even at all; because in a sense we as fans and all fans throughout every sport are responsible for the reality we take our sports nation to.
We look to these men as modern gladiators, kids look at them as heroes, and who is going to sit down and explain to their 5 year old that the favorite player took steroids, did cocaine, cheated on his wife, got a DUI, punched out a teammate, spent 10 million dollars at a casino, then went out and scored 50 points, or hit 3 home-runs. Not me, that's for sure, so we can be flabbergasted by the ongoing negative stories sports athletes are conjuring, but we all share the blame. We want to see these players perform; we'll pay money, buy shirts, posters, and everything else that goes along with being an avid fan. The athlete who is human just like the rest of us gets paid millions of dollars and we are perplexed how this could eventually become a problem. Well it's increasingly becoming a problem in the sports world, and A-rod's potential 350 million dollar contract is just the tip of the iceberg.