Photograph from Flickr by shgmom56
In 2010, actor Johnny Depp earned $75 million making movies. If you are offended by this—and refuse to attend Disney movies as a result—you certainly occupy the moral high ground from which to be outraged at Albert Pujols’ salary expectations.
If not, please dispense with all of the hand-wringing about Pujols’ “greed,” or about how many teachers’ salaries could be funded with one of his at-bats or about how he’s a “phony” for saying how much he wants to remain a Cardinal for life if he turns out to leave for more money elsewhere. This is about the high-finance world of entertainment.
(There is one exception: If you find a teacher who works in a school district whose educational activities generate millions of television viewers and billions in revenues, then the ballplayer-to-teacher comparison is apt.)
As for judging who is right and wrong in the current negotiation between Pujols and the Cardinals, there is one bit of minutia to ponder in this morality play: None of us on the outside have a clue.
We don’t know what the Cardinals offered Pujols. We don’t know what Pujols is asking. We don’t the salary numbers, the years involved, or any other terms of the discussion.
Yet it seems like everyone has a firm opinion about what needs to happen because this is, after all, the most important thing ever. St. Louis hasn’t received this much national attention since the 1904 World’s Fair.
There is rich irony in seeing Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt Jr. taking what Post-Dispatch columnist Brian Burwell rightly described as a huge risk in having allowed Pujols to test the free-agent market this fall. If ever there were a businessman who believed in taking the “risk” out of risk-and-reward capitalism, it is DeWitt, a devotee of corporate welfare for (collective) billionaires.
In fairness to DeWitt, however, many things have been said lately that rival all of the Pujols “greed” nonsense in absurdity.
One is that the Cardinals owe Pujols more money going forward because they got a great deal—relative to the marketplace—on his services over the past decade. No, they don’t. He signed a contract, and they paid it according to it.
Another bit of lunacy is that Pujols owes the Cardinals some kind of “hometown” discount, because we love him so much as long as he’s playing at a Hall-of-Fame level. No, he doesn’t.
Then there’s the one about all of this being the fault of Pujols’ agent, Dan Lozano. Oh, really? Does anyone seriously believe that the person hired by Pujols is pushing him around in these negotiations? Right. And maybe DeWitt is feeling pressure from the ushers to sign Pujols at any cost.
That’s no nuttier a thought than the ones uttered recently by manager Tony La Russa, who accused the baseball union of beating up on poor little Albert and forcing him to make salary demands against his will and better judgment. La Russa was happy to point out that he didn’t have a shred of evidence to support this theory.
He, too, attended the Glenn Beck Rally for Paranoia.
Speaking of La Russa, isn’t it interesting that his salary—and those of other managers, general manager, team presidents, etc.—is what the sports press respects as a “closely guarded secret”? Why is managerial compensation less relevant to the fans than the pay earned by the players?
There’s a strong argument to be made that none of these payroll issues are anyone’s business. These aren’t public employees. But why are the millions paid to players more relevant than millions paid to owners, managers, and the like?
It makes no sense.
And, no, there’s nothing callous or petty or disloyal about Pujols if it matters to him that he become the highest paid player of all time, even if he doesn’t need the money. Lots of employees in lots of companies measure the fairness of their compensation in relation to what colleagues or competitors earn. So what?
Further on the topic of Pujols’ interest in money he doesn’t need, are you equally outraged about the millions earned annually by the collective billionaires who own the Cardinals? They certainly don’t need it.
As reported in this space before, the Cardinal owners have seen their asset increase in valuation, based on Forbes estimates, by as much as $430 million in a 15-year period. Those numbers are not indisputable, but if reasonably accurate suggest that DeWitt and his fellow owners have earned in asset growth—annually for 15 years—nearly the dreaded $30 million per season that, if paid to Pujols, to some would signal the end of Western civilization.
That’s not including unknown tens or hundreds of millions that DeWitt and friends have earned from the team’s healthy profits. And they’ve made all that money without fear that sweat stains would ruin their Guccis.
It is one of the amazing aspects of this story—and others like it—that fans and the media have such a double standard about who profits from the multi-billion pies of baseball and other professional sports. If an individual player makes a big salary, then it’s thought to be the reason that ticket prices are so high. But if the exact same dollars are instead made by team ownership, all is well with the world.
Let’s say Pujols walks, potentially saving the team $25–$30 million per year. Do you think the Cardinals would offer an across-the-board ticket price of $8–$10 per seat for their 3 million fans? Don’t hold your breath.
The only reason that ticket prices would drop is if attendance dropped, because—in the absence of Pujols—the team starts losing most of its games. At that point, the law of supply-and-demand would kick in because, despite all the talk of St. Louis being America’s premier baseball town, one only has to go back to the late 1970s to know that a decade or so of mediocrity can turn things south in a hurry. Even here.
It’s precisely because Pujols is so valuable that the team has enjoyed its wonderful ride in the current century. That’s why it doesn’t look terribly smart of the Cardinals to have let things get to this point.
Then again, the Cardinals may have simply decided that, going forward, Pujols isn’t worth the long-term investment he is seeking. DeWitt may prefer to see how he and the team fare in the final season of Pujols’ bargain-basement ($16 million) services.
If things go poorly, the price of poker may drop sharply. If the team wins another World Series, then it may cheerfully pay Pujols more than he’s asking now.
That’s called a business judgment. It’s not about truth, justice, and the American way.
Just deal with it. And if you just can’t relax—if you still need a relief from it all—just take a break. Go see a Johnny Depp movie.
It’s quite a bargain.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
