OK, I admit it. I got taken in by the “substantiated” rumours about Shohei Ohtani’s plane and Yusei Kikuchi’s reservation at a sushi restaurant. Proof that Ohtani was on his way to sign a big deal with Rogers, to become a Blue Jay. I even got a genuine insiders’ tip! I watched and waited all weekend. It was almost inevitable. The Great One signed with the Dodgers. A ten-year contract worth $700,000,000.
It was inevitable. More rumours this week. Was the passenger on that private jet paid by Ohtani’s personal management team? Memes poking fun of, or offering consolation to Blue Jays fans. The best was a banner, hanging in the Dome beside the Jays’ thirty-year-old World Series banners: 2023 – USED AS LEVERAGE.
They were inevitable. Questions like: How can anyone, athlete or not, be worth that much money? How can you enjoy baseball when it’s so obviously just a big, dirty business? Why can’t that money be spent on something better? With so much suffering in the world…
I understand why friends have asked me those questions. I’m asking them, too.
No human being is “worth that much money”. The truth of professional (men’s) sports is that such amounts are the projected value of deals between corporations. The star athletes will benefit, of course. But they’re commodities, products. At lower levels of (men’s) sports they’re indentured servants. Ohtani Corp. and the LA Dodgers Inc. made a deal. It’s a package structured to ensure, or at least gamble on, maximum profits for both parties and their subsidiaries. If Shohei Ohtani stays healthy, continues to perform, helps Dodgers Inc. win a World Series or two, he could put, on average $70,000,000 a year in his bank account. That will be less commissions and management fees, plus product endorsements. Both corporations count on Ohtani being, by some measure, the best 29-year-old player in 2024, and the best 39-year-old player in Major League Baseball in 2033. Risky? Insurance is part of the package.
None of this justifies the huge amounts of money expended on and invested in (male) athletes and sport. But no one will write a cheque for $700,000,000 and put it Ohtani’s hand, or anyone else’s, right away. Likewise $70,000,000. Or $7,000,000. The sad truth of the capitalist enterprise of (men’s) professional sports is that no one in that realm who could write such a cheque, today, for some worthy charitable cause, will. Some team owner or investor might, I suppose. It’s Christmas, after all. But the money behind the paper would never come from the real and projected income streams that support male athletes’ contract packages.
Sure, the Jays raise more than any other team, millions for their charity. That money comes from fans, not from Rogers’ income on investments, or profits, if any, from the Jays Division.
To divert the part of the big money that’s real, not just on paper, to more worthy causes would require the intervention of a power higher than Major League Baseball: God, or a genuine socialist government. Fans of the classic movie Network will remember the pivotal scene, when Peter Finch’s character, the crazed and crazy TV News anchor Howard Beale sits in a darkened room. A corporate king, played so well by Warren Beatty, faces Beale, down a long board room table. He explains the way corporations and the world they rule really work. I can imagine the Commissioner of MLB, or the NFL, or NHL at the head of that table.
Yes, I still go to Jays’ games. I already have my tickets for 2024. I still follow Arsenal, though I can’t watch games. The English Premier League has sold broadcast rights to an expensive pay channel. Owners have to maximize profits and pay those men on the field.
I also shop for groceries. I can’t get everything from my butcher, who only sells goods from small farmers. Or the Chinese immigrant family who work so hard in their fruit and vegetable store. I have to go next door to Loblaws’ for some things. I can also go a little further to Farm Boy. I resent making any contribution to the wealth of Galen, the Weston Family, or their investors. They’re enjoying record profits and dividends this year. When I go to Farm Boy, I’m supporting the Sobey family. Some of them still live in my hometown. Bill was mayor through my childhood. My school years overlapped with Paul, their current Board Chair’s. I like that they require their scions to work their way up through their stores. They’re generous to the town, to charity, to my alma mater, and to the Arts in Canada. Still, like the Westons et al, the Sobeys are making a lot of money off of people like me.
I go to movies, occasionally, though I’m horrified by the amount of money spent to make them. That includes huge payments to the biggest stars. I’m enough of an intellectual snob that I don’t contribute to the profits made on the hugely-expensive comic book series extravaganzas. But I’m still not above paying to see a movie. At least I did the Barbenheimer thing at seniors’ prices.
We all make compromises. We suspend both disbelief and belief by choice. I know there are ways to find entertainment without doing that. It’s impossible to live in the world without compromise. For entertainment, I watch TV or stream programs. I pay Bell for that. Amazon, too. I go to a few plays each year. I pay Mirvish for that. I go to the occasional concert. I pay for that, too. I won’t be at any of Taylor Swift’s concerts, though. As good as she is, she’s not worth… There’s another compromise millions of people choose to make.
My biggie for entertainment is baseball. Most of the men who play pro ball aren’t multi-millionaires. Not yet, anyway. There are many who are on the road to being billionaires, too. Their owners– yes, owners— count on becoming mega-billionaires. It’s my choice to set that aside for a few hours, every few weeks, for six months of the year.
I’ve focused on men’s professional sports. I enjoy watching women play footie. Christine Sinclair forever! If I want to watch a hockey game all the way through, I will watch a women’s game. I enjoy women’s or mixed curling. But the big issues around women’s pro hockey or international football have to do with money. Not with somehow leveling things, so men get less and women more. It’s about equality. The aim of the new Professional Women’s Hockey League is to demonstrate that women who play at the elite level deserve to be paid as much as men are. Team owners will want to maximize profits. I can image, one day, someone declaring “No one is worth that much!” when a female professional athlete’s contract is announced.
Professional Sports around the world are all capitalist enterprises. Billions of us enjoy what they produce. That’s a hard, dirty fact. I can live with it.
I expect Shohei Ohtani will be booed, next time he appears at the Rogers Centre. Not because he’s paid so much. It will be because he spurned Toronto, and the slightly-smaller deal Rogers offered him.
Out of My Mind 