ompanies such as Disney and Fox television, which have annual revenues of billions of dollars. What the fans don’t understand is that, in many cases, single individuals do not own the teams but large companies who are able to afford to pay the players such high salaries. Television also plays a huge part in the baseball players’ increasing salaries. Major League Baseball and nearly all sports have huge contracts with the major television networks for billions of dollars. The teams can sign players to bigger contracts with all this excess money from the television networks. This is a quote that came from Tom Williams a writer for the Vindicator who wrote a column on his opinion of the high salaries in baseball, “Unlike the NFL where revenue sharing gives perennial losers like the Rams their day in the sun, baseball is pretty much reserved for the big boys.” This goes to show that the athlete cannot completely be held accountable for taking the money that was generously handed to him.There is also another definite problem with the extremely high salaries of the Major League Baseball players. In Major League Baseball there are big market teams and small market teams. Big market teams include teams such as the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Baltimore Orioles. Small market teams include the Pittsburgh Pirates, Montreal Expos, and the Milwaukee Brewers. The big market teams are, of course the one’s owned by billion dollar companies and with all the extra money from the huge TV contracts. The small market teams are the teams who have been bad for the past few years and often times in much less populated areas. Another quote from Tom Williams’ article says, “The small market teams are to blame for baseball’s financial mess. If they would stick together and force George Steinbrenner, Ted Turner and other tycoons who get huge local broadcasting fees to share (think NFL),...
