Two things happened yesterday that I'd thought would not take place – health care passing and the Twins organization giving out a contract of that size. Today, I am going to talk about the more amazing one. The fact that the Twins home office is stepping up to the plate to sign a player for more than $20M a year is amazing. The Twins will usher in a new era of baseball for Minnesotans in two ways. The first being a new outdoor stadium and the second, more importantly, is signing a ball player to a contract that only the Yankees, Red Sox or Rangers would consider. By offering Joe Mauer the 8 year $184 million contract is something baseball fans come to expect from other teams and not the Twins.
Joe Mauer is a hometown hero and for the Twins to put it out there like they did and make a statement that they understand Mauer's importance is huge. I think back to some of the better players the Twins have had and I do not see them sticking this kind of dough into one person. Baseball lost me as a fan during the last strike but the Twins organization signing of Mauer only makes me feel all the better for the reasons I stopped being a fan. Granted the Mauer contract is great news for Twins fans and the Mauer family, it just shows how our society values are skewed. Are Twins fans celebrating the fact that Mauer is still here or that the Twins front office finally shelled out some money? The no trade clause is critical to all this too, as it tells me anyway, that Mauer is serious about wanting to remain a Twin all his career.
It is just a sad state of affairs for professional sports though. Who will be the first player to reach a $1B contract? Who will be the first $30M a year guy in the Majors? How much will seats alongside the dugouts cost in a year or two? Then again, if these salaries continue northward we do have a great tax base to pay for "health care reform" and the bureaucracy it is creating.
All politics aside, first, the Rangers wouldn't be in the mix. 1, they don't have that high of a salary. 2. They learned from A-Rod. Second, the Cubs, Tigers, Dodgers, White Sox, are all teams that have large payrolls that could have been in the mix. The Yankees were the likely suitor because they will need a catcher and can better financially absorb a 20 million + salary and still field a competitive team.
ReplyDeleteTwins fans are celebrating that Mauer is here, as the result of spending the money. You don't get one with out the other.
Who is your beef really with? Mauer, for taking what he could? Who would turnthis down? The team, for paying it? The fans who support it? Isn't this a true example of the free market?
I do not fault Mauer for getting all he can as it is nearly the only form for free market we have left. I am turned away because a strike took place around money and not around the game itself.
ReplyDeleteCould I turn this down, no way nor do I fault anyone else. Much the same when it comes to CEO bonuses or pay. You pay for what you get. If a company wants to retain a top paying CEO then they have to pay for it. Then again CEO's on Wall Street are being demonized.
Of course it was about money, nearly all strikes are about money. And baseball first and foremost is a business and needs to be able to operate profitiability . It always had been, was during the strike, and continues to be.
ReplyDeleteSo again, why is the greed on Wall Street demonized while the greed in professional sports is glorified? Are we not talking about free market forces in both cases?
ReplyDeleteYou'll find plenty of people who are outraged by the greed in sports. What is unethical in sports though? Are they preying on poor people? Is there funny accounting to make things look better? Does the collapse of a sports team have the same impact?
ReplyDeleteChris, you obviously don't understand the moral hazzard created when people in charge of corporations capable of toppling our economy are given short term incentives to profit by any means while long term consequences aren't considered. The difference between baseball and wall st finance is that one is a game and one is treated like a game even though it's not.
ReplyDeleteThis type of post raises major questions for me about you. Were you ok with the behaviors of the CEO's at Enron, et al? Do you idolize people like Tom Petters?
How can you reconcile their behaviors with your christian beliefs because what they did was not moral, ethical or christian. So how do you find yourself defending them?
Kevin..don't get me wrong, what executives did in the cases of Enron, Tom Petters, Madoff, and Denny Hecker was wrong, immoral and dishonest. My reference to demonizing Wall Street was to those bank executives or other executives that worked under a moral compass are being lumped in with the crooks.
ReplyDeletePresident Obama himself had not trouble with his buddy at Goldman Sachs getting a bonus but not the rest of the CEO's. I am not defending the crooks. As we know it is the crooks that get the most press and not the thousand of CEO's that get a bonus for doing a just job.
I agree that bonuses should be tied to long term growth. To bad that same philosophy is not applied to those in Congress. So, don't get me wrong when I compare the greed in baseball to the greed on Wall Street. I do not condone those that cheat, lie and steal at all. My point is that not all CEO's, banking industry or not, are like Hecker, Madoff or Petters.
I would like to point out the difficulty in becoming a professional athlete. How many kids who play baseball in little league actually make it to playing Major League Baseball.
ReplyDeleteI have often wrestled with this given how hard I've worked just to get my middle-class paycheck. However, in the case of Mauer, or anyone else who plays professional sports, it comes down to difficulty. Professional athletes probably work harder to achieve what they earn more than we realize. And most athletes who want to make it as a professional usually never cut it.
How do team owners compare to those CEOs? I don't think they do but yet you seem to want to lump them together. There isn't any evidence of collusion or price gauging in sports. it's all supply and demand. Expensive to go, sure, but the consumer knows that and knows what they are getting into. I don't agree that maximizing a contract is greed. He's ensuring he and his family are set for life, if they are smart. More importantly, it helps raise the pay bar for every other player in the game.
ReplyDeleteROFLOL. Chris, having had family that's worked on Wall Street, I can tell you that NO ONE there has a moral compass. Greed and power are what drive those people, nothing else. And in the cases of the Wall Street executives you are defending as operating under a moral compass, they knowingly engaged in behavior that endangered all our livelihoods for the sake of extremely shortsighted profits. You do yourself no favors by defending these men. They are not saints or honest men, not a one of them.
ReplyDeleteAs to the Goldman Sachs bonuses, Chris, you seem to not be grasping the fact that Goldman had already repaid all their TARP money prior to paying out their bonuses. Because of that the US government was no longer a shareholder which meant we have no power over their compensation policies. The others had not repaid their debts. As a major stakeholder in these companies, the President not only had the authority but also the responsibility to exercise the power to determine compensation for the executives. I would have expected the same from Bush or Clinton or whoever. In fact, I wish he had exercised more authority and fired the executives. That is what any major shareholder does. I'm surprised you aren't understanding this since we've gone over it a few times before.
Honestly, I think you're being naive if you think these men are good, honest, or have any moral compass.
The Federal Government should not a stakeholder in any company operating in the United States. I understand the arguement one can make that since the US taxpayer is a major stockholder that they can yield their power through vote of the board of directors.
ReplyDeleteThe Goldman Sachs executives benefited from TARP funds as did other banks that are being demonized for paying CEO bonsuses.
Yes, I acknowledge that greed drives CEO's to do what is best for their company. Perhaps that is a bit naive but I'd like to think many CEO's have seen the mistakes of others and the price paid. Perhaps not but if they have not then we have recourse through bankruptcy. Plus, just like elections, stockholder meetings have consequences.
I blame shareholders just as much. Shareholders seek out equally short term profits and value a dividen now and higher stock price over long term stability.
ReplyDeleteIf one values the dividend then one is not looking for short term profit or at least one should not. By looking at the dividend for short term profit is not really understanding the power of the dividend in re-investing it and gaining share accumulation.
ReplyDeleteA dividend is a payment of profit from the corporation, right? You should obviously know this. Paid out quartely, typically. How is that not short term? I want the highest payment I can get today, that's the view of shareholders, at least of the corporations responsiblity to the shareholder. What one does witht he dividen is up to them. Sure, they can reinvest it with the expectation that they will increase their shares and get more short term payments from the company.
ReplyDeleteRight, a dividend payout is from the profit of the company and most times paid out quarterly that needs to be approved by the Board of Directors.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking from a shareholder perspective, to consider dividends as short term money and not to re-invest is not wise use of the dividend. Most investors that purchase stock that pay dividends, growth & income, look to re-invest the dividend in order to gain share accumlation rather than attempting to cash in on a dividend payment.
And the greater the dividend, the greater shares I can acquire. Stock prices typically drop when companies report earnings and dividend payments below expectations. Why, because investors look to a company with a better ROI. It's all about what you can do for me today.
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