Selfishness is ruining professional sports

Now that the New York Yankees have acquired Alex Rodriguez and Gary Sheffield, who's next? Sosa? Nomar? Griffey? Maddux? Bonds would look swell in pinstripes, don't you think? Why don't the Yankees just sign every hitter with a batting average of at least .320?

When the Yankees made Rodriguez, "the $252 Million Man," the latest addition to their lineup, it didn't mark the end of the sports world as we know it, but it was another step in that direction.

At press time, the Yankees' payroll was about $184 million and counting. No other team is even close. Only six of 30 teams are even over 100M; 14 teams are below $60 million, less than one-third of the Yankees total. The Yankees have players who make more than the combined earnings of the entire Tampa Bay roster ($19 million last season).

Have you seen the Yankees' proposed batting order? Kenny Lofton, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams, Hideki Matsui, Enrique Wilson.

That isn't a batting order, it's a wing in the Hall of Fame.

The reason the Yankees can collect superstars, including four of baseball's eight $100 million players, is because Major League Baseball has no salary cap, unlike the NBA and NFL. The reason baseball has no salary cap is because the players union won't allow it. And the reason the players union won't allow it is because the players want to suck as much money out of the game as they can even if they suck it dry.

And the reason they'll do that is because they don't care if they're destroying the game by eliminating competitive balance and reducing most teams to the role of the Washington Generals. They don't care if they're killing the golden goose and ruining the game for future players.

And the reason they don't care is because they're selfish.

Selfishness it ruining professional sports. If you could measure selfishness, we'd have a world record for it. It's an epidemic that has swept through all sports.

Maurice Clarett, and the other underclassmen running off to the NFL, don't care if they're ruining the NFL's free farm system known as college football. They want their money now, even if it means changing sensible rules.

Players take steroids, never mind the suspicion and cynicism it engenders for their sports. Steroids have contributed to the demise of track and field, where there is talk of scrapping all world records and starting over. They ought to do the same thing with baseball's power-hitting records. Every record set in the past 10 years should get tossed.

Players who had been laboring for a decade hitting 30 and 40 homers a season suddenly show up for spring practice with new muscles and begin hitting 50 or 60 or 70 home runs. They've ruined baseball's record book, the backbone of the game, and the legacy of players like Ruth and Mays and Aaron.

Terrell Owens and Joe Horn don't care what it does to the game's reputation if they can pull out a Sharpie or a cell phone and ham it up after a touchdown. Is this football or the climactic scene from "Jerry McGuire"? These guys are no better than Janet and Justin's theme: Anything to get Attention.

Selfishness is the reason players such as Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal command contracts that pay them an annual salary of more than $20 million while four of their teammates make the NBA minimum because the stars' contracts eat up most of the team's money allowed by salary caps.

The NBA minimum is based on a sliding scale that starts with $367,000 for a first-year player and doesn't top seven figures until he has nine years in the league.

It's not just Shaq and Bryant who are doing this to their teammates -- it's like this on every team.

Such NBA players make so much money that they can afford to take salary cuts and abandon their old teams in search of a ring, thus rendering the salary cap useless. The Lakers are the NBA's answer to the Yankees, having added Karl Malone and Gary Payton to a lineup that already included O'Neal and Bryant. Before the season began, the last time these guys started together was the 1998 All-Star Game, along with Kevin Garnett. Now they're fielding the all-star team 82 games a season.

Malone and Payton gave up millions to join the Lakers and get a ring. Isn't that why the Jazz had paid Malone more than $100 million for the previous 18 years, to bring a ring to Utah?

Like everyone else these days, Malone is just looking out for No. 1.

E-mail: drob@desnews.com

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