When is Enough's enough?

I think we can rest assured that there aren't too many millionaires on Y!A, but you're absolutely right. It's sickening. I know most people don't like the guy, but Barry Bonds was probably the most honest about the situation when he said that he hasn't played baseball since college; that now it's a business and everyone is doing their best to make themselves marketable to get the even bigger dollars.

But can we really blame them? The fans turned from RBIs to HRs and have yelled at their team to spend more to get bigger players. And then everyone wanted to be surprised when the steroids scandal hit. I don't want to get too far off topic, but it seems like a circular process where the fans make demands, teams demand their players, the players do what they have to to be great, and then once we've seen greatness we, as fans, ask for more.

You could take the Jeter situation both ways too: Jeter should be honored to play for the Yankees (common logic has it) and that he's gotten to do so for so long, so he shouldn't be worried about how much they're paying him going forward. But you could also say that he helped the team so much that the Yankees shouldn't give a second thought to lavishing him with a fat contract.

However you spin it, this is all business. I love the game, but we've all seen or felt the sadness and disillusionment that inevitably comes to those who think of it as unadulterated, as anything more than just a game.

Loyalty has gone down and too many players play for the money.

I have yet to see a star player care about winning. I hear star players in all sports say that as athletes, they enjoy a challenge. Also, they say they care about winning.

Those are only true to a certain extent.

Star players will break the banks of small market teams when the ysign with them. If they truly cared about winning, they would take a paycut to the millions they make. I still don't see how $5 million a year is insulting to some players. Just think how a paycut by star players would help their team.

As for liking challenges, I'm sure they do. But then I see guys like CC Sabathia who take the easy way to winning and money by signing in New York. Some challenge.......

Athletes are greedy. And many of us would do the same. But most athletes were raised on sports and in different ways than us so we won't understand them and they won't understand us. I know for a fact that if I were a player, I would want to stay with the team that drafted me and would take paycuts (as long as I made a decent amount of money) for the team to be more successful. However, I sometimes think that those personalities are not meant for really competitive sports, in which most young kids who are in the pros participated in.

So in conclusion, if anyone actually understood my unplanned answer, I blame it on how current youth baseball is run.