Salaries in professional baseball are out of control.  That's a real no-shitter.  I know that with television revenues and all that, there are millions and millions coming in, and the owners shouldn't necessarily pocket it all.  But in a country where schoolteachers are making $30,000 I think that giving a guy $20 million per year for hitting a ball really hard is somewhat ridiculous.

Along the same lines, to me it is a travesty when players bitch and moan about their salaries.  Often they give interviews in which they try to garner sympathy so the fans will (theoretically) pressure the owners to give in to their demands.  This often occurs when negotiating for a new contract and the comments usually sound something like this: "I have to think about feeding my family."  Keeping one's family fed is a legitimate concern, but when you hear that from a guy currently making $9 million per year, and who is claiming that he needs $12 million per year to survive, it's difficult not to sneer in contempt.

Maybe this is more of a philosophical issue, and I'm missing the point.  I've had this discussion with various people over the years, and many of them seem to think about the same as professional athletes.  The discussion is usually based on something like this:

Suppose your boss tells you that you are doing a great job and from now on you will be earning $100,000 per week.  You are elated and you immediately think of all the things you can buy for you and your family.  You couldn't be happier, and you feel tremendously lucky that you get such a huge salary for working at a job that you enjoy. 

A few days later you find out that a few people at your job are making $101,000 per week.  Some of them are senior to you, but some of them are not.  Do you:

1. Feel cheated because someone is making more than you?  Is it a sign of disrespect if someone with less seniority is making more money than you?

2. Or, do you continue to feel extremely lucky because $100,000 per week is a tremendous amount of money?

I always go with the second one, because if someone ever paid me $5.2 million per year for being a police officer (which is a job I love) I couldn't care less what the other cops were making.  When you are talking about that much money, how childish is it to always want more?  If I was working at a job where I made $6 an hour, and found out that everyone else was making $7 an hour, I might be inclined to ask for a raise.  But when you are talking about the ungodly amounts of money in professional sports, at some point you have to realize that you are now making "enough."

Apparently, though, I am in the minority.  Many of my friends say that they would feel like it was a slap in the face to be paid less than the others, regardless of what their actual salary was.  I just don't understand that.