pected to be more than $2.2 million when the season opens Sunday.” These million dollar contracts that the players are getting are nothing but peanuts to the owners. They merely raise the ticket prices a few dollars and make twice the amount of the athletes. The fans that come to watch the athletes and who pay nearly $20 to get in the ballpark are padding the pockets of these owners. Statistics taken from online site http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001 /03/30/news/baseball/ show that baseball ticket prices have gone up from $16.67 to $18.99 in just one year. A quote from the same online site http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/03/30/news /baseball/ wrote by Chris Isidore says, “Baseball fans going through the turnstiles on opening day across the nation Monday will be paying about 13 percent more than they did last year, according to a survey of prices…The increase makes baseball the sport with the fastest growing prices.” Baseball in the United States is no longer America’s Pastime. Baseball has changed to a high priced business, where average players make millions and above average players make tens of millions. To make the situation even worse, the dumbfounded owners and greedy sports agents who contaminate the game and the talented young athletes playing in it, control this business. Many fans throughout the U.S. blame the high priced contracts on the athletes, but they are not the source of the problem. In a sense, the athletes are just getting their piece of the pie. What the athletes make is just a small portion of what the industry itself makes. Professional teams routinely pull in billions of dollars per year and the athletes receive only a small share of what the industry receives. Information from online site http://www.sportsline.com shows that there are currently ten Major League Baseball players receiving a salary of over $15 million dollars a year. However, these players’ teams are owned by c...
