A-Rod and Inequality: A Lesson Worth Learning

By Sam Pizzigati, Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality. Posted February 19, 2009.

So Rodriguez went reckless. He started taking banned drugs -- at the risk of his health and reputation. That decision, at the time, probably seemed fairly reasonable. All around Rodriguez, other top ballplayers were making the exact same choice.

"For many years nobody in the sport cared who cheated," Washington Post sports columnist Thomas Boswell observed last week. "So, many did. For deals of up to $250 million, would any group of humans in history stay totally clean?"

In Corporate America, top executives don't have to take drugs to score windfalls. In their chase after the golden ring, they typically engage in more socially destructive behaviors. They downsize and outsource jobs to boost their quarterly bottom lines. They wheel and deal companies, creating workplace chaos as they go. They even, at times, ship out tainted peanut butter.

Power suits in corporate boardrooms, ironically, often attempt to rationalize the rewards that prompt these behaviors by pointing to sports. CEOs may be making mints, the suits acknowledge, but just look at the stupendous fortunes pro athletes are making.

Let's not. In reality, athletes earn nowhere near the paydays of power suits. Not one athlete has ever entered onto the annual Forbes 400 list of America's wealthiest. Alex Rodriguez, the highest-paid athlete of them all, would have to make ten times more a year than he currently does, new IRS stats make clear, to merely match the average of America's 400 highest annual incomes.

The real money in sports is going to team owners. They regularly pocket lush taxpayer subsidies for new ballparks and arenas, giveaways that send the market value of their franchises soaring.

These owners also never need worry about finding potential buyers when they take their teams to market. The growing concentration of America's wealth has left the top of America's economic ladder packed with investors able and eager to shell out half a billion or more for a pro sports franchise.

And where has all this inequality, in and around sports, left sports fans? Many can no longer afford to take their families to ballgames. Watching at home, they stew and steam as endless two- and three-minute commercial breaks -- the vehicle that lets broadcasters guarantee themselves an ample return on the billions they fork over to owners for broadcast rights -- disrupt the ebb and flow of game competition.

Even worse, inequality has soured the basic relationship between sports teams and the fans who follow them. Sports has become just another commodity. Owners now treat the sports-loving public as consumers in markets, not fans from communities. And that public has internalized this commodification.

"Instead of hoping that your team wins, you begin to demand it," as sportscaster Bob Costas has noted. "It's like you bought a car and if it doesn't work, you want to know why. When a team doesn't win, instead of disappointment or heartbreak, you now have anger and resentment."

And predictably so. Some emotions inequality always delivers.

See more stories tagged with: inequality, steroids, alex rodriguez

Sam Pizzigati is the editor of the online weekly Too Much, and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

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