It is not rare now day that the best athletes get contracts that involves a scandalous amount of money. Tiger Woods, the best golfer in the world earns more than 100 million per year, but this amount of money is also because of the publicity, not only earnings from tournaments.
But what did impress me during the weekend was the contract that a 26 years old baseball player got in the middle of an economic crisis that is still going on around the world. This contract was a 8 year and 184 million dollars deal, this means that the player will earn 23 million dollars a year, about 22.5 million more than the United States President.
Then I asked myself: "did crisis never hit sports?" How is possible that banks are running out of money and they must be supported by money and that it is being very hard to give loans meanwhile a baseball organization gives almost 200 million to a single person (well, 10% goes to the player's agent).
It is true that sports teams earn a lot of money from publicity and TV rights, also by ticket sales obviously, but market is in a hard situation now, attendance in baseball parks are decreasing because of the economic situation, really, what Joe Mauer just signed do not make sense to me, even that he was the Most Valuable Player in the American League, the best hitter, and guess what, he is a catcher! For those who don't know about baseball, catchers are known for being bad hitters.
It is true that Mauer is a phenomenon, he is one of the best players in the game right now, and fortunately for him, the Minnesota Twins, the team he supported since he was a little kid (Joe Mauer born in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he plays professional baseball now) the team for whom he has played in the past 6 years, apparently, has not been tackled by the economic crisis.
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