Along the Way: Pro athletes can’t relate to hard financial times

Gilbert Arenas is building a $1 million swimming pool and says it will include a cave bigger than the one Hugh Hefner has at the Playboy Mansion.

The Washington Wizards’ basketball star, who played two years at Arizona, is also planning to install three shark tanks, one in his basement.

You can do things like that on a $14,500,000 a year salary.

Arizona Republic columnist Bob Young writes that Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics, the highest paid player in the NBA at $24,800,000, once had flat-screen television sets installed at his home — for his dogs.

Such news must be encouraging to people who’ve recently lost their jobs, their homes and in too many cases, their hope that things will ever get better.

Every time stuff like this comes up in conversation, someone will say, “Well, OK, but you can’t blame the athlete. If the team is willing to pay that much, he’d be a fool not to take it.”

Agreed.

Some guy pushing a grocery cart loaded with scraps he picked out of a dumpster, is probably saying the same thing.

Another American yawning and stretching and climbing out of his cardboard box beneath a bridge, wakes up every morning proud as punch that the Indianapolis Colts are paying Dwight Feeney $30,750,000 this year to play defensive end.

Scrounging through the trash bin behind Burger King, a couple of ragamuffins are high-fiving each other right now, I’m sure, because Alex Rodriguez knocks down $28,000,000 a year to play third base for the New York Yankees.

The Arizona Diamondbacks looked at the economy the other day and did what a lot of thoughtful corporations are doing these days — they sent 31 front office staff workers out the door.

These were “ordinary” people. You know, the ones who hold a business together.

Thirty-one people must wonder whether the D-backs couldn’t have found a little fat elsewhere to trim from a $66,202,712 player payroll. They paid an aging Randy Johnson $15,100,546 last season and Adam Dunn $13,000,000. At the bottom of the payroll was Alex Romero, who made a paltry $390,000.

A single mom whose 401K is circling the bowl, as they say, and whose pension plan, if not her job, is seriously threatened by what’s going on in this country, can always be grateful that Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers manages to make ends meet on $21 million a year.

Now, I know these fellows pay a fortune in taxes, but the day is coming when normal people will be unable to connect with these plutocrat ballplayers — because they cannot relate to stars of such wealth. Fans will simply stop paying the incredible price of a ticket to games.

The average ticket in the National Basketball Association has reached $51.02. Average!

In the National Football League, it’s $72.10. The top medium ticket in the NFL is charged by the New England Patriots, $118. The lowest is by the Buffalo Bills, $51.

The Boston Red Sox play in major league baseball’s smallest park and charge the highest price for a ticket. The average for a Sox home game is $48.80.

The Chicago Cubs haven’t won a World Series in 100 years, but their average ticket this past season cost $42.49. The New York Yankees played their final season in Yankee Stadium and got $36.58 for a medium price ticket. They’ll play in a spanking new ballyard next season and diehard fans will probably have to mortgage their homes to buy a ticket.

Television is the big sugar-daddy of professional sports, though. That’s where teams really clean up financially.

Enough, it seems, that players can earn $15 million to $30 million a season.

And build outrageous swimming pools at their mansions, install shark tanks and make sure their dogs have flat-screen television sets to watch.

What a country, huh?

Former Tucson Citizen columnist Corky Simpson writes a Friday commentary for the Green Valley News.