Die-hard readers of The Hardcore Truth, prepare for a new era. Now that fellow columnist Daniel Kay has sufficiently bitten my style, I can write about real issues, like professional sports destroying society.
There is no question that sports are beautiful, almost art-like, and that without them one cannot complete the trinity of mind, body and spirit. But, somewhere along the way, the evils of capitalism dismantled all that was pure about the games we have grown to love.
My main concern is with the salaries that professional athletes "earn" today. When asked how he felt about Alex Rodriguez's 250-million dollar contract, an Onion correspondent replied, "Wow, he makes more than all the other Rodriguezes in Texas combined!" It's funny because it is true.
There was, however, a time when the working class could identify with these athletes. Many sports fans don't know that professional teams that make the playoffs/championships earn bonuses from television coverage and merchandise sales. While these pithy $250,000 bonuses mean nothing now, 50 years ago making the playoffs could determine whether or not a player could afford the mortgage on his house, or buy a new car. When professional athletes were middle class citizens, at least economically, the fans were able to relate to them, and vice-versa.
Of course, the players are not the only ones to blame. Disgusting sponsors like Honda allow for an already elite group of people known as golfers to play to sparse crowds in hope of capturing some prestigious Honda Classic Trophy and a one-million dollar prize. Does anyone else think its outrageous for golfers to make more money in a week then the average working man or woman will make in 25 years?
It's not as if sports are required to produce multimillionaires. After all, didn't most of the Roman gladiators get killed when they competed? Or take Cuba, where the average baseball pitcher makes as much money per year as the average Major League pitcher makes every time he faces a batter. And you wonder why they defect.
We already live in a society where celebrities are put on a pedestal, in an era where it is becoming increasingly easier to become a celebrity (see: Carrot Top). But if professional athletes enter the limelight aware of their societal responsibility, aware that children look to them first, politicians second, then how come none of them raise awareness about the slave-like sweatshop conditions that Nike puts third-world citizens through in order to produce sneakers and jerseys in the athletes' names?
Please don't interpret this as a rag on sports, but we live in a time when major corporations control professional sports. We live in an era when major college sports are dominated by pseudo-professional ringers. We live in an era where the majority of a team's most avid fans can barely afford a ticket to watch a game. We live in a society that reward's an uneducated athlete's ability to shoot a basketball more than a doctor's ability to save lives.
Take heart, we will always have our sports, but the innocence in David Halberstam's "Summer of '49" has long since given way to greed, the madness of college basketball threatened by corruption, the joy of pick-up baseball replaced by the joy of video games. I guess we should just move on " high salaries are not going away any time soon, but when the recession hits, and you're family is on the skids, don't blame A-Rod. He's just making his 25 million for the love of the game.
