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What In The World Is Next, A-Rod TV?

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 7, 2007

When baseball player Alex Rodriguez signed a 10-year, $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers after the 2000 season, it was the richest deal in sports history. And it was more than Rangers' owner Tom Hicks paid for the franchise in 1997.

Now that A-Rod is a free agent again after opting out of his contract with the Yankees, who received him in a trade with the Rangers in 2004, the baseball world is abuzz about whom he'll play for next and for how much. His tenacious agent, Scott Boras, is looking to raise the bar to yet another universe, suggesting Rodriguez, 32, may be worth $500 million to $1 billion to a team over the next 10 years and deserves $30 million a year, according to several reports.

Some owner probably will offer Rodriguez another exorbitant contract, increasing an already absurd salary structure in Major League Baseball and making it more difficult for small-market teams such as Tampa Bay to compete.

As Atlanta Braves president John Schuerholz said recently on Colin Cowherd's ESPN Radio show: "For someone to suggest that this is a valid salary level for a professional athlete, no matter what kind of voodoo economics they can do ... it's absolutely asinine."

By comparison, the $50,000 salary given Babe Ruth by the New York Yankees - the highest in baseball in 1922 - looks like chump change.

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