Working class works harder to pay more for entertainment

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

In the words of my good friend Anne King, who owns a hair salon, not a baseball team: "It boggles the mind."

Derek Jeter, the 25-year-old Yankee shortstop is about to sign a seven-year $ 118.5 million contract and one can only wonder, has this country gone mad?

Money doesn't fall from the sky nor does George Steinbrenner have a printing press in his office cranking out whatever he needs to keep his players happy. There's only so much hard cash in this world and when ballplayers get fat, other people - people with real jobs - get taken.

I called road service the other day and a young man came out to start my car. He had two of his sons with him. He'd just picked them up from CCD.

"I've got two more at home," he said.

Four kids cost a lot to raise. But here was this guy making a living, working outdoors on a sub-zero day. Yet no matter how hard he works and no matter how many people he helps who've broken down on the side of the road, he'll never make anywhere near what Jeter makes.

And maybe he shouldn't. Maybe being able to field a ball is more important than being able to jump-start a car. But I suppose that depends on whether you're sitting in a luxury box or behind the wheel of a stalled car on a freezing night.

That aside, equally pathetic is that this guy would be hard pressed even now to come up with the cash to go to a baseball game with his kids. It costs way too much, $ 28 a ticket for grandstand seats, plus parking, plus a program, plus hot dogs and Coke and ice cream. We're talking a minimum $ 200 for an afternoon at the ballpark and that's out of the question for most working people. And that's now, at old Fenway, not the $550 million proposed Fenway.

"If Jeter's deal is completed, he probably will not have the largest contract for long," the New York Times reported. "Like the Yankees, teams around baseball are discovering that the cost of locking up young stars is skyrocketing."

Jeter's salary, as astronomical as it is, will be quickly surpassed, says the Times, by Seattle's Ken Griffey Jr. who is seeking a $ 150 million contract and Alex Rodriguez who is looking for $ 200 million.

And who is paying these way over the top salaries? Television? Advertisers? Of course not. The costs are passed along to us, the consumers. We're the ones who end up paying the inflated prices of whatever products are advertised during a game. And we'll be the ones who'll continue to pay more and more at the gate to go to a game. The players will make more and the fans will pay more.

Where and when will this stop?

It's not just baseball players who are overpaid. It's the same with football and basketball players.

I have a friend who has been teaching fourth grade for 37 years and she hasn't made in her lifetime what Derek Jeter will make in a month.

I have another friend who works at a senior day care center and takes care of people with Alzheimer's. She sings to them, feeds them, takes them to the bathroom, wipes their tears, counsels their relatives and plans their days. And what she makes in an hour wouldn't buy her a bleacher seat.

It's the same all over this country. People who do the most necessary jobs are grossly underpaid while people who do the things we could live without make millions.

It doesn't make sense.

Sports is big business because it's entertainment and that's where all the money is these days. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The federal government just announced it: The gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Of course it is. How can it not be? We have our priorities wrong.

I watch EMTs race up the stairs of houses where the poorest of the city's poor live and I see how hard their job is and how hard they work, and how necessary they are. And I see nurses in the emergency rooms always stressed, always on call tending to the indigent; and firefighters out on the coldest nights, and the police never knowing if the guy they pull over is a wacko. And how all these hard-working men and women live from paycheck to paycheck. And how this is wrong and doesn't make a bit of sense and yet we allow it.

The world is full of people who do important things: Crossing guards, school bus drivers, teachers' aides, nurses' aides, people who work in shelters, all the people whose work makes life a little safer and better for everyone else. They're not celebrities or athletes, so they'll never be millionaires. They'll spend their lives counting their change while guys who can swing a bat and steal a base will make more money than most of us can even imagine.

My friend Anne said it best: It boggles the mind.