The Root of All Evil

At what point, really, did we all become franchise owners?

Perhaps it's just that we can't fathom the size of an athlete's salary, or that we have been so boned over the years on ticket prices and cable rates and merch and concessions... but every other conversation you read or hear about the players on the teams you root for is about the contract details of each player.

Lito Sheppard's contract is too big for him to stay with the Eagles as a nickel back. The A's had to move Dan Haren and Nick Swisher while they still had good contracts. The Yankees are nearly auto-obliged to turn first base back over to Jason Giambi, because of his contract. Bill Simmons is masturbating again with his trade widget. (Seriously, Bill, put it away. You'll go blind.)

Does this happen where you work? Of course not. Unless you're in a union shop, and my sympathies for such things are growing, as I continue to be exposed to companies with HR departments that couldn't find their ass with both hands and a map... well, you probably don't know what the next cube slave makes, or want to know, given how incredibly distracting that is.

And yet, sports (and if you are unlucky, your office) feels compelled to dwell in the yearly rate for all of these short-timers. The more naive among us decry athletes for caring more about dollars than wins when they make free agent decisions... and yet, if and when you get a job offer to go somewhere else for more, it's hard to imagine the people in your life telling you what a callous bastard you were for accepting it.

Finally, there's this... I saw a headline the other day of how parents were having a hard time explaining the Spitzer Situation to their kids. Beyond wondering why they were letting their kids watch the news, or why "The Governor lied and committed crimes, so no one wants to work with him any more, and he has to quit and maybe even go to jail..."

Well, isn't childhood supposed to be the time when everything *doesn't* have a price tag? And isn't some part of the appeal of sports is that you get to be just a little bit like a little kid again, and just watch and enjoy it for the moment, rather than running a cost-benefit analysis of the experience?