Manny Machado and the Free-Agent Log Jam

Sssshhh. Did you hear that? It almost sounded like a pen on paper. 

Wait—it was!

Holy crap! Could the collusion really be over? Are baseball players once again free to sign decades-long guaranteed contracts for outrageous sums of money? And are addled MLB owners once again able to protect their pockets from the stacks of cash burning a hole in them?

Oh great day in the morning! We are saved! Saved!

Like you, I'm relived beyond description to learn that Manny Machado has signed a ten-year, three-hundred million-dollar guaranteed contract with the San Diego Padres. And that the disconcerting free-agent log-jam may soon be history.

This because I am amused by the sight of successful businessmen tossing logic to the wind as they unlearn everything they (presumably) learned while (presumably) building-up their businesses. Perhaps Bill James has done a cost-benefit analysis of long-term contracts and assigned them a WAR rating. 

But I haven't seen it.

So I'll fearlessly expose myself to public ridicule and venture to say that a MLB owner has to be certifiable to even entertain the idea of one. At least as certifiable as an athlete would be to turn one down.

Is there a soul extant who feels that Albert Pujols or Miguel Cabrera or Robinson Cano or Prince Fielder are anywhere near the players they were when they signed these contracts? Or will be when they expire?

Are major league owners even semi-cognizant of this?

Sure, I'm jealous. Aren't you?

Where jealousy turns to agitation is when it becomes apparent who pays for these contracts. And that's me. Granted, appearances tend to obfuscate this fact, driving as I do a mass-market Japanese sedan and living in a modest home.

But it's true.

And sports fan, you do, too.

As you swallow those thirty-dollar parking fees and twenty-dollar hamburgers and an ever-spiraling cable bill, remember Alex Rodriguez. David Price. And Giancarlo Stanton. Clayton Kershaw. Zack Greinke. And Max Scherzer.

Someone's paying those salaries, and it ain't the boss. (Which is, incidentally, how rich guys get rich in the first place.)

While the players receive the brunt of our derision when discord rears its ugly head, we shouldn't forget those who entitle the young men we call professional athletes.

Once upon a time, professional athletes were very underpaid. But that argument is as relevant as the pony express is to communications. A middling ballplayer like Edwin Jackson (who couldn't hold Jose Quintana's glove, much less Clayton Kershaw's) has earned sixty-six million-dollars playing ball.

Edwin Jackson. Think about that.

When you or I perform our jobs in kind, we usually find ourselves in the bosses office being educated in the finer points of our employer's performance plans. (This if we're not being made available to our respective industries, as a favorite euphemism goes.)

Major-league baseball is a TV show. It's a consumer product—just like laundry detergent and tires and those packs of underwear at Walmart.

If I may be so bold, I'd like to suggest that MLB owners and players think really hard about market saturation and price points. About the fiscal limits those of us in the ninety-nine percent have for non-essential consumables.

Is it understood by owners and players that there are not nearly enough people in the one-percent to support thirty professional baseball teams? Or thirty NBA squads? Ditto our thirty-two NFL franchises. And the thirty-one NHL aggregations we share with Canada.

I'm happy for Manny Machado. Seriously. Hell, if someone's going press three-hundred million-dollars (guaranteed) into your hand you'd be a fool not to take it.

But as a sports fan whose access decreases with every bump in a player's salary, I'm forced to relegate my fandom to the same category as my crush on Melanie Liburd and follow from a distance.

The players can strike and the owners can incinerate their fortunes on long-term, nine-figure contracts and hawk their over-priced merch until the future is female. But even as an ardent, lifelong music fan who reveled in the joy of attending concerts, I learned to live without them when their cost exceeded their benefit.

I can do the same with professional sports. And suspect I'm not alone.