Is A-Rod seeking an "insane"
amount of money? Not
necessarily:
In 2001, the first year of the first Rodriguez mega-contract, major-league
players were getting 56% of their sport’s $3.5 billion in revenues.
Yet this year, Jeff Passan notes
on Yahoo Sports, players made only about 41% of baseball’s $6 billion
in revenue.
If Rodriguez gets $35 million a year, that’s about one half of one percent
of baseball’s annual revenues – and remember that he’s looking for a 10-year
contract, which means his salary as a percentage of revenues will only go down
as those revenues go up. In the perennial war of labor vs capital, it seems
that capital is winning, right now, at least in baseball. For the sake of The
Workers, let’s hope A-Rod gets what he’s asking!