Baseball is a passion in Missouri, evidenced by not only the tremendous history of, and fan support for, the defending World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals but also by the continuing interest in the struggling Kansas City Royal franchise-- years past their 1985 World Series glory.
In recent years the Royals have had (relatively speaking) low payrolls and non-competitive teams.
Yet fans still go to the beautiful ballpark (formerly Kauffman Stadium, after the respected former owner of the club) that is the home of the Royals, because they love baseball and love the Royals.
Now, the Royals are trying to build with youth, and lots of it.
They recently faced a dilemma. Their first draft choice in the 2007 summertime baseball draft (second overall) is a high school player represented by Scott Boras, an agent well-known for pushing the ‘demand envelope’ for unproven players.
That’s his “job”, of course: to get as much as he can for his clients.
But it does make a person wonder what the thinking process is for the young player and his family. In this instance, we are told, according to various media reports, that the player was seeking more than 3 million dollars as a signing bonus.
Keep in mind this young man, while projected to be an outstanding pro, has played only at the high school level.
Under the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, if the player is not signed by the deadline, he goes back into the draft pool for 2008, provided he attends a Junior College and not a school in the NCAA.
Presumably he would then go to college for a year, and be drafted by a team that can afford to pay him what he wants the next time around.
Sadly, we have again hit a time when the salary expectations of athletes have become simply outrageous. We see salaries in the NBA, for example, that are long-term --and absurd. In so many cases we hear, within a year of the signing, that that NBA player can’t be traded because no one wants --or can afford-- his outlandish contract.
The NHL is clearly walking down the very same path that led to a lockout only three years ago. Salaries are climbing again, and for a league that can’t get a decent TV contract south of the border—much less find any real fan support even in markets where they actually have teams—this will surely prove a recipe for future disaster, however much revenues allegedly are growing.
And then there is baseball, where the players union and Bud Selig nearly killed the game in 1994, and instead of juiced balls produced juiced players to ‘save’ the game through the later1990’s and into the current era.
This is a sport that refuses to establish a legitimate salary cap, where one team can spend 200 million to buy players and other teams such as the Royals can barely field a Triple A- caliber team.
This sport has no effective rookie salary cap to prevent the absurd request of 18 year-olds who think they are “worth” millions of dollars before they even step on a pro field.
Who will step up—a player, an agent, a family, a commissioner—and say this is insane, utterly insane?
This is not to say this young player won’t become a fine professional player. In all likelihood, he will.
But if he does become a tremendous player, he will earn his millions in due course.
If he doesn’t, why over-pay before the young man establishes legitimate market value?
Here’s hoping that young ballplayers such as the one in question, if they choose to turn down huge money after being drafted because their agent feels it isn’t “enough”, head off to Junior College and play for free for a season, and then stay healthy. (To close the loop on this story, this particular young player signed for $4 million dollars at the signing deadline, almost a million dollars more than Major league Baseball’s “slotting” system suggested for the second overall selection.)
We’ve all heard the stories of players (and in some cases known players) who waited and waited and sat out for that big payday, only to suffer a serious injury and see their market value plummet overnight.
Hopefully this and other such stories will have a happier ending than at.
