Columnist Dean Juipe: Alarmists crying wolf once again

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or 259-4084.

For those who cover Major League Baseball on a 24/7 basis, there seems to be unanimity on the subject of the game's future. After what happened last week, everyone says it's bleak.

They've said the same thing before, of course. A decent newspaper clip service could provide headlines from 1970, '80, '90 and now 2000 that reflect any number of writers' beliefs that the sport is doomed.

Skyrocketing salaries is always given as the reason why.

Yet, without fail, baseball, on the whole, has thrived. Sure, there are struggling franchises, but that's true in every sport.

Even National Football League franchises occasionally move.

But those who have cried wolf before about baseball's economic status are back at it again, pontificating on the latest round of free-agent signings and forecasting the sport will suffer a dreadful backlash by its cash-strapped fans.

Some day that may be true. Yet history indicates there is no real cause for concern, aside from the fact MLB's labor contract with its players expires after the 2001 season.

Baseball does need a revenue-sharing scheme identical or similar to the one used by the NFL, and the players may balk at its implementation. If so, trouble could develop.

But World Series have been skipped, as was the case in 1994, by labor disputes and the sport has always rebounded. As such, the terminal predictions have inevitably been off the mark.

While it is still shocking to see what players are paid on the open market, the same has been true for at least 30 years. It's a trend that is showing no signs of abating, what with shortstop Alex Rodriguez getting a 10-year, $252-million contract from the Texas Rangers last week and 49 collective free agents netting $1.1 billion in guarantees.

The alarmists are quick to point out that for what the Rangers will pay Rodriguez next season alone, they could have purchased either the Kansas City Royals or the Minnesota Twins lock, stock and barrel.

It's an interesting thought: Take all the Twins, their stadium and everything associated with the ball club, or take Alex Rodriguez for a single season?

The Rangers chose the latter and baseball now has 14 players who will make at least $13 million next season. A-Rod, at $25 million, tops a list that also added pitcher Mike Hampton to its rolls.

Hampton, signed by Colorado for $123 million, actually had the moxy to say "it wasn't about the money" after leaving a World Series team, the New York Mets, to play in an altitude-challenged city where his career ERA is 6.88. He was kidding us, right?

It's definitely about the money. Always was.

It was about the money when Boston sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees after the 1919 season and it was about the money when Ruth was paid a record $80,000 in 1930, which allowed him to exceed what the president was making at the time. Ruth's classic rejoinder to surpassing Herbert Hoover's $75,000 salary is easily recalled: "I had a better year than him."

Today every single player in MLB makes more than the president of the United States.

Why let it bother you?

Why begrudge player salaries when 30 years of begrudging hasn't changed a thing?

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