Are Baseball Salaries Getting a Little Ridiculous?

Americas past time is turning into Americas center for drama. No matter where you look for information on baseball you will always see some statement about the many different problems in baseball. It all started with the steroid scandal, and with Barry Bonds recently becoming the all time home run king, the questions on steroids are at an all time high. But enough about steroids in baseball, there is already so much media involved with it. Instead let's take a look at the ridiculous amount of money being passed around in the game of baseball. Players are making higher salaries then ever before and more than any other sport.

Baseball has almost turned into the sport where teams try to buy championships instead of trying to just with them. Now don't get me wrong, these players with these humongous salaries do play their hearts off to win, but when you buy some of the best players in the world and put them on the same team, then you should be one of the favorites to win a championship.

Now I am not trying to put down the Yankees, and this in now way is a bash to the Yankees, but they are the team the lives up to this the most. There are many other teams such as the Boston Red Sox that try to buy championships, but for right now I will concentrate on the Yankees. In 2005 the Yankees had many of the same players including Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Mike Mussina. The sum of these three players' salaries was over 63 million dollars. Think about that figure there. Three players on one team make more money than an entire hockey team is allowed to pay all of their players, and that is just in 2005.

In 2007 the Yankees total Payroll topped 195 million dollars as the most in the Majors. Stop for a second and think about that figure. What could you do with 195 million dollars? How can so much money be put into one baseball team of 22 players. Again there is Alex Rodriguez in there making 27 million and Derek Jeter with 21 million, but wouldn't baseball be so much more fun if the Yankees didn't have enough money to buy arguably the two best players in baseball.

Now if you think that those figures are unreal wait until you hear about the Yankees pitcher in Roger Clemens whom that picked up after the season had started. When Roger Clemens decided he wanted to come back to baseball, and with the Yankees he was give an estimated 28 million dollars. It has been figured that he will make more than one million dollars per every game he starts. Is that appropriate? How can one person be paid one million dollars to pitch a couple innings in a game?

Like I said before it is not just the Yankees that put out these incredible numbers, but they are the most notable. In fact just recently the mariners offered a deal to their star player Ichiro. The deal was for five years for approximately 90 million dollars. The deal was later signed, and became one of the most expensive deals of all time. So as you can see it is not only the Yankees that give out these ridiculous deals.

Baseball is like a duck on the pond. On the surface everything is calm but under the water those little feet are moving a mile a minute. When you watch baseball you marvel at the skill the players poses and the beautiful ball parks and basically everything that baseball represents as Americas past time. However when you take a closer look you start to hear about the steroid talks, and when you sit down and actually take a look at the salaries in baseball that are completely uncalled for and are completely outrageous.